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UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA 



ENGLISH AND FRENCH IN ENGLAND 

1066-1100 



BY 

PERCY VAN DYKE SHELLY 



A THESIS 

PRESENTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN 

PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR 

THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 



PHILADELPHIA, PA. 
1921 




UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA 



ENGLISH AND FRENCH IN ENGLAND 

1066-1100 



BY 

PERCY VAN DYKE SHELLY 



A THESIS 

PRESENTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN 

PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR 

THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 



PHILADELPHIA, PA. 
1921 






J^Si 6 1S22 



PREFACE 

The present study of the relations between the French and 
English peoples and tongues in England between 1066 and 
1 1 00 is based upon a thesis presented to the faculty of the 
Graduate School of the University of Pennsylvania in partial 
fulfillment of the requirements for the doctorate in the year 
1 91 4. My original plan was to investigate the whole question 
of the relations between the two tongues in England during 
the entire Middle English period, but the stress of duties 
in the Department of English has made it impossible to 
pursue the subject beyond the year 11 00. Rather than post- 
pone publication longer, I have deemed it best to print that part 
of the original thesis which concerns itself with the relations 
of the two peoples in the land and therefore aims to lay the 
necessary foundation for any fresh study of the relations be'- 
tween the two languages. 

I wish to take this opportunity to acknowledge my great in- 
debtedness to Professor Clarence Griffin Child, of the Depart- 
ment of English, and to Professor Edward Potts Cheyney, of 
the Department of History. Their friendly advice and criti- 
cism, given with the sacrifice of much valuable time, have been 
ever at my disposal, and the example of their high scholarship 
has been my chief inspiration in pursuing a study that lies! 
within their special fields. 

Percy V. D. Shelly. 
University of Pennsylvania, April, 1921. 

3 



CONTENTS 
I. 

Unsatisfactory Nature of Our Present Knowledge 7 

II. 
Absence of National Unity in England at the Time of the Conquest. 17 

III. 
The Question of English Hatred of the Normans 24 

IV. 
The Question of Norman Contempt for the English 36 

V. 
Contact Between the Two Peoples 45 

VI. 
The Use of French, English, and Latin 74 

VII. 
Conclusion 93 

BlBLIOGSAFHY 96 

5 



Unsatisfactory Nature of Our Present Knowledge 

The attitude of the French and EngHsh people toward each 
other in England after the Norman conquest, and the status of 
the two tongues, were described by Sir Walter Scott in the 
first chapter of Ivanhoe ( 1819) in the following words: 

-'"Four generations had not sufficed to blend the hostile 
blood of the Normans and Anglo-Saxons, or to unite by 
common language and mutual interests, two hostile races, one 
of which still felt the elation of triumph, while the other 
groaned under all the consequences of defeat. . j . . 

" French was the language of honour, of chivalry, and even 
of justice, while the far more manly and expressive Anglo- 
Saxon was abandoned to the use of rustics and hinds, who 
knew no other. . . . 

" — the great national distinctions betwixt them (i.e. the 
Anglo-Saxons) and their conquerors, the recollection of what 
they had formerly been, and to what they were now reduced, 
continued, down to the reign of Edward the Third, to keep open 
the wounds which the Conquest had inflicted, and to maintain 
a line of separation betwixt the descendants of the victor 
Normans and the vanquished Anglo-Saxons." 

Though occurring in a novel, the passage was not written 
as fiction. The great romancer was not, in this instance, 
shaping the facts of history to the higher needs of his art. He 
was simply popularizing, for the sake of historical background, 
the sober pages of Hume, and, as it proved, was giving un- 

7 



8 ENGLISH AND FRENCH IN ENGLAND, 1066-1100 

precedented currency and publicity to a view which, in its 
essentials, had the support of the best scholarship of the time. 
Only a few years later (1825), Augnstin Thierry drew a 
picture of Norman England, in his Histoire de la Conquete 
de I'Angleterre par les Normands, which was similar to 
Scott's.^ This work, through Hazlitt's translation of 1837, 
came to be widely known in England. Thus Scott's popular- 
ized version of Hume was reinforced in the public mind by 
an elaborate and detailed study oi the period by a later his- 
torian. 

Subsequent writers did much to correct this view in impor- 
tant particulars, especially Freeman. How different Free- 
man's conception of the status of the two languages was from 
Scott's or Thierry's is suggested by his remark that " from the 
very first, crowds of Englishmen must have found it needful 
to learn French, and crowds of Frenchmen must have found 
it expedient to learn English." ^ Yet, in spite of the work of 
Freeman and others, the old view persists. The picture drawn 
iby the great novelist has proven to be almost indelible, and 
even today many of us, it seems, have a mental image of an 
England for generations after the conquest divided into two 
camps — the two peoples, French and English, living separately 
in the land, distinguished one from the other by race, tongue, 
manners, and rank ; the one moved by a bitter, persistent, and 
almost universal feeling of hatred for their conquerors and 
oppressors ; the other filled with arrogant pride and contempt 
for their inferiors. 
. This view is reflected in many of the special works on the 

iCf Green, Historical Studies, p. 61. "By exaggerating the differ- 
ences and prolonging the isocial severance between conqueror and con- 
quered, he converted our whole subsequent history, even to the Great 
Rebellion, into a warfare between ' Saxon ' and ' Norman '." 

^Norman Conquest, V, 520. 



NATURE OF OUR PRESENT KNOWLEDGE g 

history of the English tongue. Lounsbury speaks of "the 
singular spectacle oif two tongues flourishing side by side in 
the same country, and yet for centuries .... utterly dis- 
tinct and independent .... It was natural that a contemp- 
tuous feeling should exist at first on the part of the con- 
querors toward the conquered. Though little evidence has 
been handed down, such certainly seems to have been the 
case .... The tongue of the common people was, in truth, 
in the eyes of the Norman, a barbarous one. He made not 
the slightest attempt to destroy it : he contented himself with 
simply despising it." ^ Toller remarks, " we find the case pre- 
senting itself of two quite distinct speeches current in the same 
country, the one that of a foreign conqueror, the other that of 
the conquered natives." ^ Emerson, on the other hand, says, 
"the conclusions seem natural that the fusion of the two 
races began as early as the beginning of the twelfth century, 
when Henry I came to the throne, that a century after the con- 
quest the fusion was complete, and that direct Nornnan in- 
fluence certainly came to an end with the loss of Normandy 
at the beginning of the thirteenth century." ^ Greenough and 
Kittredge assert, "There is no evidence that the Normans 
despised the English language, and they certainly made no 
attempt to crush it; ... . the two languages lived amicably 
side by side for about two hundred years, neither affecting the 
other essentially." * 

These diverse opinions are typical of the still unsettled 
state of the whole question of the relation oi the French and 
English tongues in England after the Norman conquest. 
How unsatisfactory our knowledge is, is seen in the disagree- 

* Lounsbury, History of the English Language (igo7), 51-52, 54. 

* Outlines of the History of the English Language (1900), 207-208. 
'Emerson, History of the English Language (1914), 57-58. 

* Words and Their Ways in English Speech (1902), 84-85. 



10 ENGLISH AND FRENCH IN ENGLAND, 1066-1100 

ment among scholars as to even the name by which the foreign 
tongue introduced into England can best be described. Was 
it the Norman dialect of Old French, or a mixture of Old 
French dialects? Was the French spoken in England Anglo- 
Norman or Anglo-French? or are we to distinguish between 
Anglo-Norman of one period and Anglo-French of another? 
Again, did the French in England develop organically? 
Scheibner distinguishes between a Norman period (1066- 
1204) and a French period (1204 to about the end of Edward 
III). In the first he considers that the French in England 
was indigenous, for it was the mother-tongue of the Nomnan 
conquerors. In the second, which he calls the period of 
Gallomania, the French used in England was a foreign speech, 
which the descendants of the conquerors, now Englishmen, 
acquired as the tongue of gentility.^ Vising, on the other 
hand, considering that the formation of a special Anglos 
Norman dialect should be dated from 1066, holds that its 
development continued to the middle of the fourteenth century, 
that it reached its zenith before 1250, and that in the four- 
teenth century it disappeared little by little. He denies that 
any sharp distinction can be drawn between Anglo-Norman 
and Anglo-French.- Murray uses " Anglo-French " to des- 
cribe the " French spoken for several centuries in England," 
and outlines its history in these words : " In its origin a mix- 
ture of various Norman and other Northern French dialects, 
afterwards mixed with and greatly modified by Angevin, 
Parisian, Poitevin, and other elements, and more and more 
exposed to the overpowering influence of literary French, 

• Ueber die Herrschaft der fransosischen Sprache in England vom xi his 
sum xiv Jahrh. (Annaberg, 1880), 5. 

*Etude sur le Dialecte Anglo-Normand du xii^ Siccle (Upsala, 1882), 4, 
and Vising, Franska Spraket i England, chap. iv. Also Behrens, Paul's 
Grundriss, 2nd ed., I, v, 960. 



NATURE OF OUR PRESENT KNOWLEDGE 



II 



it had yet received, on this side the Channel, a distinct and in- 
dependent development, following, in its phonology especially, 
English and not continental tendencies. As the natural 
speech of the higher and educated classes, it died out in the 
fourteenth century." ' Behrens, in 1886, remarks that his 
study of the French loan-words in Middle English down toi 
1250 seems to support Murray's view as to the origin of 
Anglo-French,^ but later is of opinion that the same evidence 
points almost throughout to a fundamentally Norman phon- 
ology, in some cases to the phonology oi other old French 
dialects.^ Suchier considers that the Norman-French intro^ 
duced with the conquest underwent certain changes and in 
England became Anglo-French or Anglo-Norman.* Skeat, 
without committing himself as to the dialectal origin of this 
foreign tongue in England, prefers to call it Anglo-French 
rather than Anglo-Norman.^ Gaston Paris uses the word 
"Norman" in speaking of the French people in England 
and the literature they produced during the first years 
after the conquest, but " Anglo-Noirman " of these people 
and their literature after they had become partly Angli- 
cized. Just where the line is to be drawn is not clear.^ 
Morsbach considers that the term "Anglo-French" is the 
most fitting for this French tongue shot through with Eng- 
lish elements, and that from a still insufficiently determined 
Old French basis, it developed in England intO' a unique 
French jargon which was kept from complete degeneration 
only by constant literary contact with continental, and es- 

^ Nezv English Dictionary, Part I, p. x, note. 
' Franzosische Studien, V, ii, 5. 

* Paul's Grundriss, I, 960-962. 

* Altfransosische Grammatik (Halle, 1893), 2. 

^Principles of English Etymology (Oxford, 1891), 2nd series, 5. 

* La Litterature normande avant I'annexion, 912-1204 (Paris, 1899), 36. 



12 ENGLISH AND FRENCH IN ENGLAND, 1066-1100 

pecially with central, French/ Menger somewhat non-com- 
mittingly says, " It seems but natural to suppose that the 
essential basis of the original French in England was Nor- 
man." He leans favorably toward Scheibner's distinction be- 
tween Anglo-Norman and Anglo-French, but adds, " neither 
defines accurately the entire period." Again, " The only general 
definition of Anglo-French possible is that it is bad French as 
used in England (during the Middle Ages)." He holds with 
Sturmfels that Anglo-Norman had no " regular organic de- 
velopment" because it was never "a part of the life oi the 
great masses oi the people;" and he considers "its irregu- 
larity " as its " one great distinguishing characteristic." ^ 
Zachrisson likewise uses " Anglo- Norman," but speaks of " the 
period of more than three hundred years when Anglo-Norman 
was spoken in England." ^ 

Another question is, did French and English continue side 
by sidei as separate tongues, each retaining its identity and in- 
dividuality, even in the mouths of those whoi were bilingual, 
or did there develop a jargon of French and English mixed, 
which served as a medium of communication between the two 
races. Scheibner's view of the impossibility of there being 
such a " mischsprache " is checked by Behrens, who cites 
Schuchardt's studies of the Slavo-German and Slavoi-Italian, 
and considers the question to be at least debatable.^ Einenkel 
is quite convinced of the existence of a "mischsprache" in 
England after 1066, but his views are based on doubtful, 
grounds and have been accepted by f ew.^ 

'^Beitrdge ztir romanischen und englischen Pkilologie (Halle, 1902), 330. 

"Menger, The Anglo-Norman Dialect (New York, 1904), 1-4. 

^Anglo-Norman Influence on English Place-Names (Lunds Universitets 
Arsskrift, N. F., Afd. i, vol. 4, no. 3, 1909), 16. Also Anglia, XXXIV 
(1911). 

* Fransosische Studien, V, ii, 3-4. 

^Anglia, XXVI, 466 ff. 



NATURE OF OUR PRESENT KNOWLEDGE 



13 



This diversity of opinion on fundamental questions ia 
characteristic of the whole history of the relationship of 
the two tongues. And as one reviews what has been done 
on these and other phases of the subject, one sees withl 
new distinctness how essential to a proper understanding 
of the history of the French and English tongues in England 
is an accurate knowledge of the relations of the French 
and English peoples. One is struck by the frequent resort 
of philologists to the political and social history of the timesi 
for arguments to bolster their views concerning changes 
in vocabulary, phonology, or grammar, both oif French and 
English. Some writers, Scheibner among them, have based, 
their study of the relation of the two tongues almost exclu- 
sively upon political and social history. If we turn to Menger 
to find out, for instance, what a philological study of Anglo- 
Norman enables us to say concerning the dialectal origin of 
French used in England, we discover that he argues for a 
Norman origin not on philological grounds but on historical : 
" It seems but natural to suppose .... that the essential 
basis of the original French in England was Norman .... 
The preponderating political influence in England was that of 
Norman leaders, and the literary men of France most likely 
to be attracted to England were Norman men-of-letters, — 
friends, it may be, oi the political chiefs." Likewise of the 
duration of Anglo-Norman in England — " Any exclusive Nor- 
man influence must have waned, however, at least after the end 
of the twelfth century, since in 1204 the individuality of 
Normandy itself was merged with that of the Ile-de-France." *• 

But despite the importance of the subject, we possess no 
satisfactory study of the relation of the two' peoples in Eng- 
land after the Norman conquest. The works of scholars in- 
terested chiefly in language are based mostly upon the his^ 

» The Anglo-Norman Dialect, 4. 



14 ENGLISH AND FRENCH IN ENGLAND, 1066-1100 

torians, such as Freeman and Green, i. e. upon secondary 
sources. The historians have been interested chiefly in 
political and constitutional affairs, and have touched upon 
questions of language and racial intercourse only incidentally, 
if at all. Freeman, Stubbs, Round, Ramsay, Adams, Davis, 
and others have here and there cited pertinent passages from 
the documents. But no one has made a special examination 
of the original sources with the single view of extracting 
from them all they have to contribute to questions concerning 
the social, political, and cultural relations of the two peoples. 

Freeman has done more perhaps than others, and to his 
great industry and detailed knowledge everyone who works in 
this field finds himself almost constantly indebted. But 
though he devotes five volumes to the study of the conquest, he 
relegates the discussion of the fusion of the two races and 
of the use of the two tongues to two appendixes. His study 
of the effects of the conquest upon the English language is 
devoted chiefly to influences on grammar and vocabulary. 
Moreover, additional sources have since been discovered or 
made accessible. Of still greater moment, Freeman has been 
subjected to serious criticism. Round, possibly his most per- 
sistent critic, considers it a duty " conscientiously to combat, 
as an obstinate and mischievous superstition, the convic- 
tion of his preeminent accuracy and authority on matters of 
fact," and speaks of Freeman's "bias against all that was 
'French,' together with his love for the 'kindred' lands of 
Germany and Scandinavia."^ How strong this bias was is 
shown in Freeman's comment on the influx of French words 
■ into the English vocabulary : " This abiding corruption of our 
language I believe to have been the one result of the Norman 
Conquest which has been purely evil." ^ 

.''■Feudal England, pp. x-xiii and 318-319. 
* Norman Conquest, V, 547, 



NATURE OF OUR PRESENT KNOWLEDGE jr 

It seems, then, that the logical point of departure for a 
further study of the relations between the English and French 
tongues is a fresh consideration of the relations between the 
French and English people following upon the conquest. 
Especially must we study conditions immediately after the 
conquest. The mistake found most frequently in the books is 
that of drawing conclusions as to the state of affairs brought 
abont by the conquest from statements of conditions, let us 
say, in the reign of Henry HI, or even in that of Richard I. 
To apply Robert of Gloucester's remark (about 1300) — " Vor 
bote a man conne Frenss, me telth of him lute " — to the reign 
of William I or William II is as uncritical as it would be to 
picture language conditions at the court of Elizabeth from 
the state of affairs at the court of Charles II. The error 
is due in part to the scarcity of early notices of language con- 
ditions, and in part to the perhaps natural tendency to think of 
the long continuance of French in England as being due to the 
conquest, and to ignore distinctions between effects of the con" 
quest and what can only be described as effects of later events! 
such as the accession of the Angevin dynasty in 11 54, or the 
coming of the twelfth-century renaissance — 2, movement as 
much French as the Italian renaissance was Italian. In a 
study of the effect of the Norman conquest upon the position 
of English it is precisely the early period that is the most im- 
portant. Without a clearer knowledge of it our conclusions 
as to speech conditions in the thirteenth and fourteenth cen- 
turies are likely to be erroneous; and it is in the accounts of 
the conquest itself and of the readjustments that followed 
close upon it that testimony as to the political, social, or com- 
mercial contact between the two peoples is most dependable. 
This is largely because of the greater certainty we can feel in 
that period than we can later as to the use of the racial terms 
French and English in the original documents. After 11 00 or 



l6 ENGLISH AND FRENCH IN ENGLAND, 1066-1100 

thereabouts it is often difficult, if not impossible, tO' determine 
whether a chronicler in a given passage uses the word ' Angli ' 
for those of Anglo-Saxon descent, or for those of Norman 
descent living in England, or for those of mixed descent. The 
same uncertainty is felt in the use of ' Normanni/ ' Franci," 
etc. 

The present paper, therefore, is a study of the relations of 
the French and EngHsh people and tongues in England be- 
tween 1066 and 11 00. It aims, within the period, tO' collect 
the available evidence as to English hatred of the Normans, 
and Norman contempt for the English; to study the points of 
contact between the two peoples, and the attitude of English- 
man and Frenchman to each other's language, and of both to 
the Latin; and finally to discover, if possible, whether Eng- 
lishmen learned French, and Normans English, and, if so, 
when and to what extent this took place. 



II 

The Absence of National Unity in England at the 
Time of the Conquest 

To get a just notion of the attitude of Englishmen toward 
the foreigners in the land it is necessary tO' disabuse our 
minds of any belief in the existence of political unity in 
England at the time of the conquest, or of a national English 
sentiment, in the sense in which we now understand those 
terms. Perhaps the fundamental flaw in Freeman's work is 
his interpretation of what was really division, anarchy, license, 
and localism, as the liberty and patriotism of a free and noble 
people. As to freedom, it has been estimated that at the 
death of Edward the Confessor, jout of 275,274 souls, "the 
entire balance with any claim to be considered free is 50,817, 
say between a fifth and a sixth of the whole." ^ Those that 
were free were but too often the oppressors of the servile.^ 
and used their power to advance their personal interests rather 
than national unity. Tt is no exaggeration to say that up toi 
the time of the conquest England had never been united.\ 
Certainly, at the great crisis we find her divided against her- 
self. In 1065 the strongest house of England was spht by 
jealousies, and in the next year] Tostig, brother of Harold, 

^ Ramsay, Foundations of England, I, 512. 

'Cf. Malmesbury's statement that the masses, left unprotected, were a 
prey to the more powerful, who gathered' wealth by seizing their property 
or by selling their persons into slavery in' distant countries. De Gestis 
Regum Anglorum, iRolls Series, II, 305. 

17 



1 8 ENGLISH AND FRENCH IN ENGLAND, 1066-1100 

was an ally of the Conqueror, sailing with a force of Flemish 
and Normans to harass the coast of England.! On his way 
north, putting in at Sandwich, he took with him some of the 
' butsecarls,' i.e. some of the king's standing naval force or 
shipfyrd — as the Anglo-Saxon chronicler says, some willingly, 
some unwillingly.^ 

Freeman explains Tostig's willingness to aid William by 
the fact that he was a hopeless exile who had lost all feeling 
as an Englishman.^ But there are many indications, other 
than the readiness of some of the butsecarls to fight against 
their land and king, that many Englishmen felt as little con- 
cern about the fate of their country in 1066 as they had in 
the days of Aethelred. ( In face of the danger in the south, 
Harold was unable to keep his forces in the field after Stam- 
ford Bridge, and seems to have succeeded in gathering but a 
small army to meet William at Hastings.! William of Poitiers, 
it is true, ascribes to Harold a large army, including an' 
auxiliary force of Danes.® But we hear nothing else of these 
Danes, and this chronicler would perhaps naturally exaggerate 
the enemy's numbers. Moreover, William of Malmesbury 
goes out of his way to correct those writers who exaggerate 
the numbers of the English, and tells us that except for the 
stipendiary and mercenary soldiers Harold had few of the 
people with him.* He also mentions troops deserting Harold 
as he marched southward, because he refused to share with 
them the spoils of Stamford Bridge. Further, the Con- 
queror landed without resistance, in spite oif the fact that he 
had been delayed a month by adverse winds and the English 

^Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, C. 1066. 

* Norman Conquest, III, 300. 

' Gesta Willelmi Duds Normannorum et Regis Anglorum, in Giles' 
Scrip tores, 132. 

* De Gestis Regum, II, 282. 



THE ABSENCE OF NATIONAL UNITY 



19 



knew of his threatened invasion. Again, Edwin and Morcar 
made no effort to assist Harold in gathering an adequate 
force. Florence of Worcester tells us that some of the Eng- 
lish deserted just before the battle/ and the Anglo-Saxon 
Chronicle says that the king fought William with those men 
who wished to follow him.^ 

O'i this, Freeman characteristically tries to make the best : 
" It may be so; " Harold probably had more than he could well 
use in such a cramped position; their quality at any rate was 
excellent, etc.^ But the truth seems tO' be — partly no' doubt 
because of haste, but partly because o'f lack of discipline, unity, 
and patriotism — ^that Harold's force was small and largely 
^untrustworthy. Certainly it is far from true that "the pre- 
sence of the Frenchmen in the land awoke a spirit in every 
English heart which has never died out to this day." * On the 
contrary. Englishmen showed a remarkable readiness to su\y- 
mit to William after his victory at Hastings!. Although 
Dover seemed impregnable to the Normans, the English trusted 
neither in the strong natural position of the fortress nor in the 
number of their men, but promptly surrendered.^ The Kent- 
ish men met William of their own accord not far from Dover 
and swore fealty to him.® Envoys from Canterbury brought 
to William the submission of that city. Likewise, Winchester 
surrendered on demand. At London, meanwhile, the English 
magnates were quarreling over a successor to Harold. Oni 
William's approaching London, the chief men of the city, in- 

^ Chronicon ex Chronicis, ed. B. Thorpe, I, 227. 

2 ". . . mid tham mannum the him gelsestan woldon." A. S. Chron. D. 
1066. 
^Norman Conquest, III, 445. 
* lb., Ill, 422. 

'Wm. of Poitiers, 139-140. 
•Orderic, Ecclesiasticae Historicae, ejd'. Le Prevost, II, 153. 



20 ENGLISH AND FRENCH IN ENGLAND, 1066-1100 

eluding Child Eadgar, Archbishop Aldred, Edwin and 
Morkere, and " ealle tha betstan men of Lundene " appeared at 
Berkhamstead and surrendered; and the chronicler adds that 
it was very unwise that they had not done so sooner/ At the 
coronation on the following Christmas, French and English, 
assembled in Westminster Abbey, being asked in their respec- 
tive tongues if they would have William for king, shouted 
their consent and promised to^ serve him.^ 

At the time of the coronation the resistance of England wasi 
by no means ended, but the narrative of the outbreaks in dif- 
ferent parts of the realm in the following four years is eloquent 
cf the lack of English unity and of any general feeling against 
Frenchmen. During William's absence in Normandy in 1067, 
the men of Kent rose against the foreigners, especially at 
Dover, but they did so with the aid not only of other foreigners 
but with that of Eustace of Boulogne, who had led a wing 
of William's army at Hastings and was the very man toi 
whom the men of Kent in 105 1 had been so hostile. William 
of Poitiers explains this by their hatred of the Normans, but 
the men of Dover seem to have been on the side of the Nor- 
mans of the castle and against Eustace and the men of Kent. 
Freeman attributes this to Dover's memory of and hatred for 
Eustace.^ Rather, I think, it was due to the spirit of localism, 
which we find in all warfare of the period, and which we shall 
see illustrated again in the siege of Exeter in 1068. More- 

M. 6". Chron. D. 1066. Cf. Brevis Relatio de Ongine Willelmi Con^ 
questoris, in Giles' Scriptores, 8. — "ad eum coeperunt veniri Angli plurimi 
et cum eo pacem facere." 

'Guy of Amiens, Carmen de Hastingae Proelio, in Giles' Scriptores, 50 — 
" Spirat utraque manus, laudat, spondet f amulari." Cf . Brevis Relatio, 8. 
Wm. of Poitiers, 142 — " Protestati sunt hilar em consensum universi minime 
haesitantes, ac si coelitus una mente data unaque voce Anglorum voluntati 
quam faciUime Normanni consonuerunt." Orderic, II, 157 — " et universi 
consensum hilarem protestarentur una voce, non unius linguae locuticne." 

^Wm. of Poitiers, 157; Norman Conquest, IV, 116. 



THE ABSENCE OF NATIONAL UNITY 



21 



over, Orderic tells us that while many of the English' were thus 
rebelling, many were faithfully upholding the king, among 
them Copsi, Aldred, and some of the other of the bishops; also, 
that some of the most discreet citizens of the: towns, some dis- 
tinguished men of great name and wealth, and many of the 
commons were rising against their own countrymen in be- 
half of the Normans.' Citing this passage. Freeman remarks, 
" This plainly comes from William of Poitiers." But that is 
no reason for doubting its truth. There is much evidence to 
confirm it, and Orderic himself — ^half English, born in Eng- 
land, and always speaking of himself as an Englishman — sees 
fit to accept it. The same chronicler reports that on returning' 
to England just before Christmas, 1067, William was re- 
ceived by the English with honor, and that in turn he treated 
the nobles and bishops with great courtesy, thus reducing the 
number of the treasonably disposed. At the same time, how- 
ever, he warned Normans and English tO' be on guard against 
their enemies." 

Nor in the disturbances of 1068 and 1069 in the North and 
West can we discern any real national unity or division of 
antagonists along national lines. True, there are indicationsl 
of the existence of something like a Western League and a 
Northern League, but they were of short duration and accom- 
plished little. And as Orderic reminds us, the disturbances in 
those frontier districts were largely the same as prevailed there 
in the days of the Confessor and his predecessors.* In the 
southwest Exeter made great preparations of defense against 
the Conqueror, who had not yet appeared in that district. 
Its citizens, we are told, raged against all Frenchmen. But 
on the expedition against that city William's army consisted 

'Orderic, II, 176-177. 
Orderic, II, 178-179. 
' Orderic, II, 179. 



22 



ENGLISH AND FRENCH IN ENGLAND. 1066-1100 



of Englishmen as well as Normans, and on its march harried 
the land. [Thus, less than two years after Hastings we find 
Englishmen fighting for WilHam, harrying their own land, 
and besieging Englishmen in an English city^ After a siege 
of eighteen days, finding themselves treated leniently by 
William, the citizens rejoiced that they had fared better than 
they had thought to, and only a little later are on the king' si 
side repelling an attack on the town by the men oi Devon and 
Cornwall/ Also in the south-west, in 1068, we find sons of 
Harold, with the aid of a force from Ireland, harrying Somer- 
set. Eadnoth the Staller, who was staller under Harold,^ with 
a force oif French and English,^ met them and was defeated. 
Malmesbury attributes the use of Englishmen against English- 
men in this conflict to William's desire to profit in any event.* 
That this is probably untrue is shown by the many other in- 
stances in which Englishmen are found fighting in William's 
armies, with apparent willingness, and by the fact that Ead- 
noth was a royal officer. In 1069, again, bishop Geoffrey of 
Goutances put down an uprising in Somerset and Dorset with 
men of London, Winchester, and Salisbury.^ 

Pointing in the same direction are the stories of Godric, 
abbot of Winchcombe, Edric the Wild, and Hereward the 
Wake. Godric was considered responsible for the uprisings 
in Gloucestershire. He was seized and put in the keepingi 
of another Englishman, Aethelwig, abbot of Evesham, who 
thus seems to have been a trusted lieutenant of William. 
Edric the Wild, whose lands in 1067 were frequently ravaged 
by the garrison of Hereford and by Richard Fitz-Scrope be- 

^Orderic, II, 180-193. 

* Florence of Worcester, II, 3. 

' Gaimar, Lestorie des Engles, 'Rolls iSeries, 11. S418-19. 

* De Gestis Regum, II, 312. 

*Orderic, II, 193. Cf. Norman Conquest, IV, 278. 



THE ABSENCE OF NATIONAL UNITY 



23 



cause he disdained submitting to the king", was reconciled 
to the king in 1070, and in 1072 attended him on an expedi- 
tion to Scotland/ The deeds of Hereward are represented in 
story as the desperate resistance of a great patriot, symbohc of 
the spirit of the EngHsh. But in the light of contemporary 
records his attacks upon Peteit>orough look more like plun- 
dering raids by a band of outlaws and Danish pirates. In any 
case, while the tenants of the abbey were on Hereward's side, 
the monks joined the new Norman abbot Thurold; and against 
this uprising William summoned both French and English 
troops.^ This was in 1070. In 1071 there is good reason to 
believe that Hereward had made his peace with William, and 
that in 1073 he accompanied him to the war in Maine. 

In the North, too, we find English leaders surrendering to 
the king and being received into his peace. Archil, whom 
Orderic calls the most powerful man in Northumbria, and 
bishop Aethelwine of Durham, are received at York in 1068; 
and the latter is employed by William on an embassy to Scot- 
land. At the end of 1069 Waltheof and Gospatrick sub- 
mitted and were restored to their earldoms. In 1074 Edgar 
Aetheling left Scotland, joined William in Normandy, and 
he and all his men were. inlawed by the king and received 
into the latter's household.^' 

^Florence of Worcester, II, i, 7, 9. 
2Gaimar, 11. 5484 and 5525 f. 
'^A.S. Chron. E. 1074. 



} III 

The Question of English Hatred of the Normans 

The above evidence, drawn from the period of actual con- 
quest ( 1 066-1071), seems to point conclusively to the absence 
of a national sentiment in England at the time of the con- 
quest such as would cause a general feeling of hatred toward 
the Normans. Loyalty in that day was a local, not a national, 
attachment. The idea of national unity had simply not yet 
developed, either in England or in Europe. 

But may not the conquest itself have produced a general feel- 
ing of hatred? What of the oppressions, confiscations, bur- 
densome taxes, loss of rank and office which the English suf- 
fered during the reigns of the two Williams ? Would not these 
things make all Englishmen one in their hatred of Frenchmen 
and things French? On a priori grounds we should perhaps 
answer " yes ; " and in the sources there are complaints and 
evidence of bitterness. But in studying the records we must 
constantly distinguish between complaints directed particu- 
larly against the upper classes as Frenchmen or Normans and 
complaints of oppression or taxation such as the lower orders) 
suffered long before the conquest and were tO' suffer long after, 
on the continent as well as in England. We must also guard 
against mistaking the remark of a single chronicler, or a con- 
dition peculiar to a certain locality, for indications of general 
hostility. It is worth while, in any case, to review the evi- 
dence. 

The first source to which we turn is the Anglo- S^xorK 
24 



ENGLISH HATRED OF THE NORMANS 25 

Chronicle; and in that great EngHsh authority we are sur- 
prised at the comparative lack of animus against the con- 
querors. Under 1066, in Chronicle D, we have the entry, 
" Frenchmen had poissession of the place oi slaughter — all as 
God granted to them for the folk's sinsi .... and they 
erected castles wide throughout this nation and distressed poor 
folk and nevertheless ever let harry all the country that they 
traversed .... and he (William) gave away every man's! 
land." In this annal evidence of a brave, patriotic senti- 
ment against the events of 1066 has been noted and attributed 
to the influence of Wulfstan, bishop of Worcester.^ But 
Wulfstan, who was considered English of the English, was a 
member of the deputation of native leaders to submit to the 
Conqueror, became a friend and associate oi distinguished 
Normans, adopted Norman ways, learned, it seems, to speak 
French, and joined William against the rebel earls Roger and 
Ralph in 1075, and William II against the March lords in 
1088. Moreover, after the entry of 1066, Chronicle D is as 
resigned as Chronicle E. In the famous annal of William' si 
death and the summary of his character and deeds. Chronicle 
E, 1087, there is no reference to the fact that William was a 
foreigner or a conqueror, nor any complaint of Englishmen 
as opposed to Frenchmen. If mention is made of bishops 
and abbots he deposed, the Chronicle says nothing of their 
race, but adds that " at length he spared not his own brother, 
Odo." Complaint is made of the oppressive work of building 
castles, of the king's greediness, of the severity of the forest 
laws, at which great men and poor men alike murmured; but 
no distinction whatever is drawn between Englishmen and 
Frenchmen. 

The same is largely true of other contemporary authorities, 
although in some of these there is more evidence of English 
1 Brandl, Paul's Grundriss, 1123. 



26 ENGLISH AND FRENCH IN ENGLAND, 1066-1100 

hatred than in the( Anglo-Saxon chronicle^. Malmeslbury 
remarks that the Norman writers have praised WilHam to 
excess, whereas the Enghsh, out oi hatred, have unduly re- 
proached him. Speaking of the difficulty in getting at the 
truth concerning the quarrel between Godwin and the Nor- 
mans in Edward's reign, he explains that this is because of the 
natural dissension of the two peoples, or because the English 
bear ill with a superior and the Normans cannot suffer an 
equal/ The same writer says England has become the home 
of foreigners and the kingdom of aliens; today there is no 
Englishman who is an earl, bishop, or abbot; the strangers 
prey upon the riches and the vitals of England, nor is there 
any hope of ending this misery.^ Orderic, too, gives us a 
picture of the sufferings of the English at the hands of foreign 
barons and adventurers who found themselves suddenly raised 
to power. We hear of the dishonoring of women, even those 
of high rank ; ^ and we learn that at the time oi the conquest 
many women found refuge in monasteries and in taking the 
veil.* , 

That such conditions were much more prevalent during the 
five years of conquest than during the remainder of thei 
century is, I think, clear. Especially severe, according to 
Orderic, were the outrages committed on the English during 
William's absence in Normandy in 1067, chiefly it would seem 
by Odo and William Fitz-Osbem. The latter is called the 
first and greatest of the oppressors of the English.^ Florence 
of Worcester complains diat in the same year William im- 
posed on the English an insupportable tax; but it is a question 

^ De Gestis Regum, II, 283 ; I, 240. 

* lb., I, 278. a. Simeon of Durham, Historia Regum, Rolls Series, II, 97. 
•Orderic, II, 224. 

* Eadmer, Historia Novorum, (Rolls Series, 124. 

* Orderic, II, 167 flF, 265. 



ENGLISH HATRED OF THE NORMANS 



27 



whether '' A'nglis " in this passage is not meant to include 
foreign subjects in England as well as native.^ The ravaging* 
of Northumbria and the misery it caused are well known. 
But it must be noted that the North had never really been 
brought under subjection, that it was a land constantly abet- 
ting Danish invasions, and was generally in a state of upheaval 
through family feuds. Terrible though the^ory of ruin and 
misery is, it is not much unlike that of the Vavagings of the 
North by the Scotch, which, in Simeon of Durham, followsi 
the account of William's devastation.^ The North was not 
imfamiliar with such ruthless slaughter, pillage, and burning 
at the hands of others than Frenchmen. From the same north 
country we read of English refugees in 1070 fleeing ta 
Scotland.^ And after the ravaging of Cheshire, Shropshire, 
Derbyshire, and Staffordshire, we get a picture of starving* 
men, women, and children receiving aid at Evesham Abbey. 
Yet, the Abbot of Evesham, Aethelwig, who did most to 
relieve the distress, was an Englisfiman high in the favor of 
William and entrusted, it seeiiis, with considerable power.* 
We hear of complaints against followers of Norman nobles, as 
those of Robert Cumin in 1069, accused of rapine and seduc- 
tion ; ^ and as those of Bishop Walcher of Durham, which led 
to a popular uprising and the murder of the bishop in 1080. 
But here again it is significant that one Leobwine, evidently 
an Englishman, was as much the object of the people's wrath 
as was Walcher or Gilbert, both foreigners^ with whom he was 
intimate.® Foreign abbots, as Turold of Malmesbury, for- 

^ Chronicon ex Chronicis, II, 2. 

* Historia Regum, Rolls Series, 191. 
3 lb., 190. 

* See Freeman, Norman Conquest, IV, 176. 

*De Miraculis et Translationibus, in works of iSimeon of Durham, I, 
245-246. 
•Florence of Worcester, II, 13-16. 



2.8 ENGLISH AND FRENCH IN ENGLAND, 1066-1100 

merly a monk of Fecamp, occasionally played the tyrant. But 
in this case the opposition to the offender was as much Nor- 
man as English. The king, finding that he acted more like 
a soldier than an abbot, swore by the splendor of God that 
he would give him all the fighting he wanted, and so trans- 
ferred him to Peterborough, which was infested by robbers 
("a latrunculis ") led by Hereward.^ As late as 1083 we 
have the outrage perpetrated by the Norman abbot Thurstan 
and his Norman followers upon the monks of Glastonbury. 
But William tried and removed the offender and sent him back 
to Normandy. Orderic says he could relate many similar 
occurrences, but in the records of the time this is certainly an 
extreme and unusual case.^ In the story of the execution of 
Waltheof, earl of Noirthumberland, in 1076, we get a hint of 
the state of English feeling in the face of an obvious injustice. 
He was hurriedly executed at dawn " while the people were 
asleep," lest the townsmen (of Winchester), "taking the part 
of so noble a compatriot," should slay the guards; and we 
read that he was brought to the block by the malice of the 
Normans, and to the grief of many.^' 

We hear also of depredations and imjust seizures by Nor- 
man sheriffs, as in the case of Urse of Abetot, against whom 
archbishop Aldred uttered the famous malediction, " Hat- 
test thu Urs, have thu Godes kurs." * This admirably illus- 
trates how incidents that have been popularly remembered as. 
evidence of racial hatred between French and English are as a 
matter of fact indications of no such thing. Professor Tup- 
per, for example, says,^ " Among the many striking in- 

* Wm. of Malmesbury, Gesta PontiUcum, iRolls Series, 240. 

* Orderic, II, 226. Florence of Worcester, II, 16-17. 
■ ' Orderic, II, 266-267, 285. 

* Wm. of Malmesbury, Gesta PontHicum, 253. 
^Journal of English and Germanic Philology, XI, 100. 



ENGLISH HATRED OF THE NORMANS 29 

stances of Saxon resistance to Norman aggression, none is 
more vivid than the famous * Curse of Urse.' " To put it 
thus is altogether misleading. It is not so much an English- 
man cursing a Norman as it is an archbishop, who happens to 
'be an Englishman, cursing an unscrupulous sheriff, who hap- 
pens to be a Norman. Aldred curses Urse because he hasi 
built his castle too close to the monastery and has cut off 
part of the burying ground, "ut fossatum cimiterii partem 
decideret." That Aldred was no enemy of the Normans ia 
sufficiently indicated by the fact that he was one of the first 
O'f the English magnates to submit to William, that it was he 
who crowned William king and Matilda queen, and that for 
the remainder of his life he was active in behalf of the kingi 
and of the cause of law and order. 

Under William II we hear much of oppressions, cruelties, 
and burdensome taxes. The king failed to defend the country 
folk, we are told, against his men-at-arms, and permitted their 
property to be seized by his young soldiers and squires.^ Out- 
rages were committed by the king's foilowers upon the country 
through which they passed.^ Especially is there great cry 
against Ralph Flambard, the king's minister, afterwards bishop 
of Durham. But in none of these complaints is any distinc- 
tion drawn between Englishmen and Frenchmen. The 
oppression fell upon rich and poor, lay and cleric, native 
and foreigner. Orderic specifically mentions the fact that 
the king's officers pillaged farmers, merchants, and the church; 
and Florence of Worcester testifies to Ralph's mulcting the 
wealthy as well as the poor.' The evils of William II's days, 
in short, were the inevitable result of a weak government in 
a feudal state. If England suffered at the hand of unprin- 

^ Orderic, III, 315. 

* Eadmer, Historia Novorum, Rolls Series, 192. 

* Orderic, IV, 54. Florence, II, 46. 



30 ENGLISH AND FRENCH IN ENGLAND, 1066-1100 

cipled Norman nobles and ministers after the' death of the 
Conqueror, Normandy suffered still more under the vacillating 
Robert/ The fact that there were hardships and numerous 
complaints is no indication that in England the issue was drawn 
on the line of nationality, or that the English people of the 
time ascribed their sufferings to their being ruled by Normans. 
The contemporary authorities make no mention of such a dis- 
tinction beween Norman oppressors and English oppressed. 
If the barons were sometimes the oppressors of the people, 
they were often also their protectors, as was Robert of Rhud- 
dlan, who was killed in repelling an attack by Griffith, king 
of Wales ; his death was " loudly lamented by both the English 
and the Normans." ^ 

What is true of the reign of William Rufus, is true largely 
of that of the Conqueror. Allowance must be made for a 
certain amount of exaggeration in those passages in the 
chronicles which imply general hatred of the English for the 
Normans. Frequently such overstatement is simply rhetor- 
ical, especially in Henry of Huntingdon. Often it is due to 
a monkish desire to point a moral. It is noteworthy that de- 
predations were committed by Englishmen as well as by* 
Normans, and that Normans sometimes preyed upon each 
other. In 1069 England is described as a scene of general' 
desolation, " a prey to the ravages, of natives and foreigners." 
And in the same early period, we are told, some of the new* 
nobles shamefully oppressed their vassals, but others governed 
theirs well.^ The absence of national prejudices in the 
sources is striking. Orderic has more, on the whole, concern- 
ing the rivalry and hostility between the Normans and the 
French on the continent than concerning that between Nor- 

^ For details see Orderic, III, 261, 289, 350, etc. 
'Orderic, III, 286. 
* Orderic, II, 187, 167. 



ENGLISH HATRED OF THE NORMANS 



31 



mans and English in England. To many a man the events of 
the darkest years, 1 066-1 071, must have seemed no' worse than 
those of the days of Aethelred or of Hardicanute. As one 
reads the stories of the two conquests in the sources he con- 
cludes that England suffered more from the Danes than from 
the Noirmans. Indeed, Henry of Huntingdon is of opinion 
that of the five scourges of Britain, the Danish invasion was 
more extensive as well as vastly more severe than the others, 
and he perhaps based his conclusion on the stories of some 
O'f those " very old persons " whom in his youth he had heard 
tell of the outrage perpetrated by Aethelred on the Danes in 
1002/ As for ravagings, as late as 1041 England had wit- 
nessed the spectacle of English earls, including Leofric, God- 
win, and Siward, going out at the head of English forcesi 
against Worcester, "to put to death all the inhabitants they 
could find, to plunder and burn the city, and lay waste the 
whole province," merely because the king's taxgatherers had 
been attacked and two of the housecarls put tO' death.^ To 
many Englishmen in 1066 the prospect of a stronger govern- 
ment at the hands of William must have been welcome. Per^ 
haps in this way are we to explain in part the readiness of 
some of the English leaders, such as Aldred and Wulfstan, to 
accept the new regime. When the actual conquest was over, 
in 1 07 1, the comparative peace and security established by the 
Conqueror's strong rule were looked upon as no less re- 
markable than desirable. " The gode frith the he macode on 
thisan lande" is especially noted in the rVnglo^Saxon chroni- 
cler's summary of William's reign.^' 

But though the wounds caused by war may soon have 
healed, and though the burdens of taxation may have been no 

^ Historia Anglonim, Rolls Series, 137, I74- 
* Florence of Worcester, I, 195. 
^A.S. Chron. E. 1087. 



32 



ENGLISH AND FRENCH IN ENGLAND. 1066-1100 



greater than those to which the English had been accustomed, 
what of the loss of office and lands? May not the extensive 
dispossession of Englishmen by foreign earls, barons, bishops, 
and abbots have tended to keep alive any feeling of animosity 
arising from other causes? 

From the highest offices Englishmen were gradually eli- 
minated. Of the twelve earls of England in 1072 only one 
was English, Waltheof of Northumberland, and he, as we 
have seen, was executed in 1076 on a charge of rebellion, in 
spite O'f his being married to Judith, the king's niece. In the 
great synod held at Winchester in 1070, Stigand, Archbishop 
of Canterbury, Ethelmar, Bishop of the E^st Angles, and a 
few abbots were deposed. From the Norman point of view 
this was a necessary step in reforming the English church, 
and the depositions were made on canonical grounds. To' the 
English it seemed to be the result of a determined policy toi 
deprive them of their dignities, that foreigners might be ap- 
pointed and the royal power confirmed.^ Malmesbury re- 
ports that William made " an ordinance that no monk or cleric 
of the English nation should be allowed tO' aspire tO' any 
dignity," and he complains that the king, in the place of those 
who died, appointed industrious men of any nation but the 
English, adding that the obduracy of the English toward the 
king — indurata in regem pervicacia — made such a measure 
necessary.^ No other trace of this ordinance is found, but 
it is clear that foreigners were systematically introduced into 
bishoprics, and to a less extent into abbacies, as vacancies oc- 
curred through deposition or death. By 1070 Wulfstan of 
Worcester and Siward of Rochester were the only English 
bishops left. Each held his see until death, 1095 and 1075 
respectively. Among the abbots the number of Englishmen 

* Florence of Worcester, II, 5. 
'D{7 Gestis Reguni, II, 313. 



ENGLISH HATRED OF THE NORMANS 33 

was larger. Aethelwig, abbot of Evesham, continued in 
office and in the favor of William until his death in 1078. 
Aethelsige, of Ramsey, also enjoyed the confidence of Wil- 
liam, and except for a temporary banishment, kept his abbacy 
during his life (d. 1087.). Aethelnoth remained abbot of 
Glastonbury until his death in 1082. In the list of abbots) 
who signed the Canterbury Privilegium in 1072, seven of the 
twelve are Englishmen,^ although only two of fourteen 
bishops are English. Of four successive abbots of Croyland 
from 1062 to 1 138 three are Englishmen, the exception beingt 
Geofifrey, 1109-1124.^ 

A detailed study o'f Norman and English land-holdings isi 
impossible here. But examina.tion of Domesday Book would 
show that many Englishmen retained their lands, some as! 
tenants in capite; that there were instances of large English 
holders having Norman tenants ; that there were Norman 
holders of small position; and that among the instances of 
unjust seizures. Englishmen as well as Normans were some- 
times the offenders. In some shires the confiscations seem toi 
have been very extensive; either because large numbers of 
■lormer holders were killed at Hastings, as was especially true 
of some of the south-eastern counties; or because William 
took this means of punishing districts that had proved stub- 
'bom. In other counties, such as Devonshire, Cornwall, Wilt- 
shire, Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire, Yorkshire, and Dur- 
ham, the number of English holders is comparatively large. 
That the redistribution oi lands often brought about close 
relationship between Frenchmen and Englishmen is certain, 
in view of the feudal nature of that distribution. Norman and 
English tenants were often in the same position as holders! 
under a superior English or Norman grantee. Thus abbot 

* Eadmer, Histona Novorum, 253. 
'Orderic, II, 285-289. 



34 



ENGLISH AND FRENCH IN ENGLAND. 1066-1100 



Vitalis is to " have all his demesne throughout England. . . . 
ha is to hold his lands, woods, ways, and waterrights with all 
honor; and the men, French or English, who hold of his fee 
are to make their peace with him." ^ 

Thus, neither in the granting of lands nor in the disposal 
of offices was there a hard and fast line drawn between Eng- 
lishmen and Frenchmen. If English earls and bishops were 
gradually displaced, so that after 1095 there was none to 
answer the king's summons, the number of either was small. 
There were but fourteen bishops; and in 1072, twelve earls, 
whose authority "did not cover one-third of England," and 
one of these was English.^ Further, there were some Eng- 
lish barons, abbots, sheriffs, and reeves. Among the charters 
and notices of William I we find documents addressed to the 
king's thanes, French and English, of Yorkshire; to all the 
thanes of Kent, French and English; to all the barons of 
Kent, French and English ; to all the king's sheriffs and all hisi 
barons, French, English, and Welsh.^ Among the sheriffs 
who appear to be EngHsh are Edmund, sheriff of Herts;* 
Swegn, sheriff of Essex; ^ Edward, sheriff of Wilts. ^ 

Indeed, it is very doubtful whether, as Freeman held, " the 
net result of the Norman Conquest was the social thrustingt 
down of the great mass of Englishmen." "^ The loss of the 
chief offices in the state by Englishmen has been unduly 
stressed, in its influence upon the whole population. Evir 

^Regesta Regum Anglo-N ormamiorum, Oxford, 1913, I, no. 213. Dated 
1076-1085. 
* Ramsay, Foundations of England, II, 97-98. 
^Regesta, I, nos. 31, 100, 102, 261. 
*Ib.. no. 16, dated 1067 (?). 
' lb., nos. 84, 86, 87, etc. Dated c. 1066-1085. 
•lb., nos. 13s, 247, 267, 283, etc. Dated c. 1070-1087. 
''Norman Conquest, V, 476. 



ENGLISH HATRED OF THE NORMANS 35 

dence has been cited from Domesday Book to show that 
the peasants, the tillers of the soil, were in many casesi 
being depressed/ But there are indications also that the 
number of serfs had decreased since King Edward's day.* 
l_If the "great mass of Englishmen" were in a low social) 
position, that was a condition inherited from before the Nor- 
man conquest. It has been shown that at the close of Ed- 
ward's reign " all the real political power of the realm " 
rested between the king and at most sixty or seventy others, 
including bishops, earls, abbots, and king's thanes; and the 
" depressed state of the bulk of the population " at that period! 
has been illustrated, — the lack of freedom, the concentration of 
land in a few hands, and the decay of liberty as compared with 
earlier Anglo-Saxon times.^ - If by the Norman conquest many 
Englishmen suffered, many Englishmen also profited. Cer- 
tainly there was nothing in the distribution of lands or offices! 
to bring aibout a general or lasting hostility toward foreigners. 
The very nature of the land grants was often such as ad- 
mirably to encourage the union and fusion of the two' races. "7 

,-1 

* See Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond, 60-66. 
'lb., 35-36. 

• Ramsay, Foundations of England, I, 508 f. 



IV 'r 

The Question of Norman Contempt for the English 

Quite as unfounded in fact as the view that the EngHsh 
one and all hated the Normans is the belief that the Normans 
one and all despised the English and treated them with disdain 
and contempt. For the latter conception the rhetorical and 
unsupported statement of Henry of Huntingdon, that at the 
death of the Conqueror it was a disgrace to bei called an 
Englishman, and the hatred of William de Longchamp, bishop 
of Ely in the reign of Richard I, for all Englishmen, are per- 
haps chiefly responsible. Of these Freeman has successfully! 
disposed.^ But in his discussion of the attitude of the Nor- 
mans to the English he does not goi back of the twelfth century, 
and he proceeds throughout on the tacit assumption that there 
was such a general feeling of contempt at first, which wore 
away with the gradual fusion of the two peoples, 
j It must be granted that there is some cAndence of such dis- 
dain at the time of the conquest] other than the words of 
Henry of Huntingdon. William of Poitiers says that Kent in 
1066 was inhabited by men less rough or savage ("a minus 
feris hominibus") than the inhabitants of the rest of Eng- 
land. And in praising the alleged excellences of bishop Odo, 
he remarks that the English were not so uncultivated ("nee 
Angli adeo barbari fuerunt"), as to fail to appreciate them.^ 
Orderic says that the Normans foimd the English " agrestes et 
pene illiteratois," and he attributes this to the decay of mon- 

^Nonnan Conquest, V, 830 f. 
*Gesta Willelrm, 149, 150. 
36 



NORMAN CONTEMPT FOR THE ENGLISH 37 

astic life after the Danish wars. He also declares that abbot 
Ulfkytel was deposed by Lanfranc because he was English 
boirn and was disliked by the Normans. But immediately 
following this is an account of the appointment of Ingulf, an 
Englishman by birth and sometime secretary to William him- 
self.^ William Rufus, it is reported, on one occasion ridiculed 
the superstitions of the English.^ 

A false color is sometimes given to passages from the 
chroniclers by mistranslation of the word "barbarus." The 
phrase from William of Poitiers quoted above has been ren- 
dered "the English were not so barbarous," etc. Again, 
Freeman declares that Lanfranc at first refused William's offer 
to make him Archbishop of Canterbury because of his " ignor- 
ance of English and of the manners and customs of the bar- 
barous islanders." ' The phrase in Freeman's authority is 
l^gentiumque barbararum," and probably means no more than 
" of this foreign people." 

^ Contempt of Norman churchmen for English saints is often 
cited as evidence of widespread dissension and hostility be- 
tween the two peoples, even within the church. Stubbs re- 
marks, " Even Lanfranc and Anselm were not at first sight 
able to recognize the merits of the English saints, whose 
rough names were unfamiliar to their ears." * Of Lanfranc 
Freeman says, " The man who could defend the rights of our 
island, of its king and of its Primate, himself showed, in his 
own dealings with Englishmen, too much of the spirit in 
which his creature had plucked down the tombs of the Eng- 
lish abbots of St. Alban's." ' But, as Freeman notes, Lan- 

'Orderic, II, 207, 285-286. 
'lb., IV, 87. 

* Norman Conquest, IV, 340. 

* Memorials of Saint Dunstan, Rolls Series, p. Ixiii. 
^Norman Conquest, IV, 441. 



^8 ENGLISH AND FRENCH IN ENGLAND, 1066-1100 

franc speaks Oif " insula nostra " and " Nos Angli." He cites 
Eadmer's story of Lanfranc's doubt as to the true sanctity of 
some of the EngHsh saints and martyrs, and of his conversation 
with Anselm on the occasion oi the latter' s first visit to Eng- 
land in 1079. But it is important to note that the doubt wasi 
a purely theological one, and that the dispute in no senses 
turned on the question of nationality or oi national prejudices.^ 
Further, Anselm, himself a foreigner, not only argued in 
favor of the particular saint in question, but brought Lan- 
franc to his way of thinking. Elsewhere we find stories of 
Lanfranc's appealing to St. Dunstan for aid in his quarrelj 
with bishop Odo over certain lands of Canterbury, of his re- 
covery from illness through St. Dunstan's help, and of hisi 
gratitude to the saint.^ 

Paul, abbot of St. Albans, 1 077-1 088, in rebuilding the 
monastery, destroyed the tomibs of his predecessors, whom he 
was wont to call rude and ignorant. That this aversion, how- 
ever, did not extend to living Englishmen, at least those of 
wealth, is seen in his friendliness with Ligulf and his wife, 
who gave two bells for the abbot's new minster.^ Ethelelm, 
abbot of Abingdon (d. 1084), prohibited the cult of St. 
Aethelwold and St. Edward, saying that they were English 
rustics and their church ought to be destroyed. Yet we find 
Ethelelm on terms of familiarity with at least one Englishman, 
Thurkill of Arden, the wealthy English holder in Warwick- 
shire, who gave certain lands to the aibbey as alms,* Not in- 
frequently the contempt of a foreigner for an English saint 
was changed to veneration. Warin, abbot of Malmesbury, 
removes the relics from the church and has no faith in St. 

^Eadmer, Vita Anselmi, Rolls Series, 350 f. 

* Memorials of St. Dunstan, 144, 151, 238. 

'Freeman, Norman Conquest, IV, 400. 

*Chronicon Monasterii de Abingdon, 'Rolls Series, II, 284 and 8. 



NORMAN CONTEMPT FOR THE ENGLISH 39 

Aldhelm. But later he is led to believe through the miracu- 
lous cure of a blind fisherman, a miracle that greatly increases 
veneration of the saint among Normans. Warin places the 
saint's remains in the shrine and with the assistance of Serlo, 
albbot of Gloucester, and a monk Hubert, makes an examina- 
tion of them. Osmund, bishop of Salisbury, officiates at the 
translation in 1078.^ Similarly, at St. Edmund's, although 
it was the custom of many of the French to deride the virtues 
of English saints, William Fitz-Asketil, "quidam Francigena" 
from Hereford, " fama sancti cognita," seeks the aid of St. 
Edmund to cure typhus fever. ^ Indeed, St. Edmund seemd 
to have been venerated by foreigners in England almost if not 
quite as much as by natives. Baldwin of St. Denis, the 
French physician of Edward the Confessor, who was made 
abbot of Sit. Edmunds in 1065, built a great church in hisi 
honor, to which he transferred the relics. On one occasion 
while in Noirmandy, he sent one of his household to' England 
for suppHes and for a relic of the saint. ^' In 1080 Warner, 
" Francigena " and abbot of Rebaix, after a visit to St., 
Edmunds took home a relic of the saint that he might bd 
venerated abroad, " in exteras regiones." The reputation of 
St. Edmund reached as far as Anjou and Lucca. In a church 
at Lucca there was an altar of St. Edmund.* Further, we have 
the instance of the son oi one of William II's knights, Yvo, 
being named Edmund from the saint and martyr.^ And at 
the translation of the relics in 1095, Walchelin, bishop of 
Winchester, and Ralph Flambard were among the foreignersi 
present. * At Durham the Conqueror himself gave gifts to 

^ Wm. of Malmesbury, Gesta Pontificum, iRolls iSeries, 421-424. 
'Samson, in Memorials of St. Edmunds Abbey, Rolls Series, 142; Her- 
mannus, in ib. 74. 
'Hermann-US, 56; Samson, 140. 
*Hermannus, 70; Samson, 176, 137. 
•Hermannus, 77; Samson, 145. •Hermannus, 86. 



40 ENGLISH AND FRENCH IN ENGLAND, 1066-1100 

St. Cuthbert's church, and William of St. Carilef, bishop of 
Durham, 1081-1096, closely identified himself with Durham, 
t>uilt the cathedral, collected a library, spoke of St. Cuthbert 
as his lord, and when dying considered himself unworthy to 
be buried in the cathedral.^ 

Such is the extent of the evidence of Norman contempt for 
the English that I have found in the sources for the eleventh 
century. The statement of Henry of Huntingdon that the 
Normans vilified England while they conquered it can be re- 
futed as easily as his remark that the English, losing favor and 
honor, from 1088 ceased to be a people.^ Both are of those 
facile, rhetorical flourishes that so conveniently introduce a 
new chapter. In fact, the evidence is overwhelmingly against 
the existence of any general opposition to England or Eng- 
lishmen as such, even from the first year of Norman rule. 

Even before their coming to England, it seems, at least 
some of the Norman nobility had a great respect for the 
strength and resources of England. We are told that in the 
council held to discuss the expedition, some opposed it as 
a task far above the strength oif Normandy.^ The English 
are praised for their fighting — a. people ever ready with the 
sword, descended from the ancient Saxon stock of most war- 
like men.* Harold is described as a man brave and honorable, 
handsome in physique, agreeable in speech, and affable of 
manner.^ When, after the coronation, William returned to 
Normandy with English booty and English hostages, the 
Norman nobles and many of the French nobility, though they 

^Simeon, Historia Dunehnensis Ecdesia, Rolls Series, loi, 108; Wm. of 
Malmesbury, Gesta PontiHcum, 273. 

* Historia Anglorum, Rolls Series, 173, 214. 

• Wm. of Poitiers, 121 ; Orderic, II, 122. 
*WTn. of Poitiers, 137. 

'Wm. of Jumieges, Historia Normannoruin, ed. Duchesne, 287. 



NORMAN CONTEMPT FOR THE ENGLISH 41 

thought the long hair of the Enghsh a curiosity, admired and 
envied their beauty. They wondered at their garments; heavy 
with gold, their gold and silver vessels, their great drinking- 
horns tipped with gold, and at the English embroidery, espec- 
ially Harold's standard of the armed man, woven in purest 
gold/ As a result of the distribution of spoils by the re- 
turning Conqueror, the costly and beautiful products of 
English art were known and admired in churches and monas- 
teries of France, Aquitaine, Burgundy, Auvergne, Normandy, 
and other provinces.^ } Indeed, the wealth of England seems 
to have been a constant marvel to the continent. I The magni- 
ficence oif William Rufus astonished the Norman, French, 
Breton, and Flemish lords when in 1091 he visited Normandy. 
On another occasion he returns to his " ditissimum Albionis 
regnum." And of Richard Basset it is said that in the pride 
of his English wealth he exalted himself above his equals and 
compatriots in Normandy.^ 

The Conqueror's manner of rewarding his followers with 
grants of land was in itself a powerful incentive to their 
identifying themselves with the new land and looking upon 
themselves as Englishmen. It has been noted that in the 
original expedition against England, "the chief Norman 
Barons were content to be represented by their sons." * The 
sons frequently became founders of new families in England, 
and in such case would look upon England as their home. 
Often, too, on the death of a baron of England who held 
estates in both countries, the Norman estates were given to 
the elder son and the English estates to the younger. This 
happened on the death of William Fitz-Osbern, Earl of 

^Wm. of Poitiers, 156; Orderic, II, 167. 

* Wm. of Poitiers, 144. 
•Orderic, III, 366; IV, 56; V, 68. 

* Ramsay, Foundations of England, II, 15. 



42 



ENGLISH AND FRENCH IN ENGLAND. 1066-1100 



Hereford, in 1071, and of Roger de Montgomery, Earl of 
Shrewesbury, in 1094. In the latter case the older son became 
Robert de Belleme and supported Robert of Normandy; the 
younger son, receiving English estates, became Hugh de 
Montgomery, Earl of Shrewsbury/ On the death of Hugh, 
however, his estates went to his brother Robert. 

That many of the Norman nobles receiving English grants 
identified themselves closely with the new land is seen in the 
fact that they founded monasteries, churches, and abbeys on 
their new estates, and that they and members of their families 
were buried in England rather than in Normandy. William 
de Warenne and his wife Gundrede were buried in the Priory 
of St. Pancras, Lewes, which they had founded. Roger de 
Montgomery and his son Hugh were buried in St. Peter'si 
church at Shrewsbury, which Roger had founded ; and Hugh, 
Earl of Chester, was buried in St. Werburgh's, Chester, which 
he had rebuilt.^ 

Moreover, even the highest Normans in England, from the 
first frequently called themselves Englishmen or were re- 
ferred to as Englishmen by their contemporaries. William 
was crowned " King of the English," and Matilda " Queen 
of the English," according to the custom of the English kings. 
Thus all subjects of William, including tenants in capite, 
were Englishmen in law at least. Further, the Normans dwelt 
with pride upon the elevation of William from Duke of 
Normandy to King of the English.® Matilda was raised from 
countess to queen, and great stress was laid upon the fact that 
Henry was the only son of William and Matilda who was 
bom in royalty. Matilda herself had English blood in her 

^Orderic, III, 425. 

'Orderic, III, 317; II, 422; IV, iii. 

•See Wm. of Poitiers, 143, 145; Annalis Historia Brevis, in Giles', 166. 
Cf. Brevis Relatio, in ib. 8. — " Willelmus hinc comes Normannorum, postea 
vero rex Anglorum." 



NORMAN CONTEMPT FOR THE ENGLISH 43 

veins, being descended from a daughter of king Alfred the 
Great/ From William on, a Norman king is " rex Anglo- 
rum" or " rex Angliae," chiefly the former, in all the sources. 
The Norman kings traced their line back by means of the 
English kings before Harold. Malmesbury calls his history 
" Gesta Regum Anglorum," and Henry of Huntingdon en- 
titles his, " Historia Anglorum." 

The words " Angli " and " Normanni " are often used to 
distinguish the native English people from the foreigners in 
England, but " Angli " is sometimes applied to all the subjects 
of the king in England as opposed to the "Normanni" of 
Normandy.^ Again, the king's council in 1071 is " Anglorum 
concilium," although its members were at this time chiefly 
foreign.^ In 1074 Earls Ralph and Robert are "powerful 
earls of the English." * On William IPs expedition against 
Robert in 1089 those on the king's side are " English," in- 
cluding lords of Normandy and of England.^ In one pas- 
sage "English" is made to include all the subjects of Wil- 
liam II, including those of Normandy, Brittany, and Maine, 
as opposed to Burgundians and French." To churchmen of 
foreign birth the term Englishman is likewise early applied. 
Lan franc, Thomas of York, and Remi of Lincoln, are spoken 
of as " praesules Anglorum." "^ Eadmer explains Lanfranc'd 
unfamiliarity with some of the English institutions by the 
fact that he was as yet an inexperienced Englishman — " quasi 
rudis Anglus." ^ That those born in England looked upon 

* Ramsay, Foundations of England, 1, 266. 

■ Eadmer, Historia Novorum, Rolls Series, 40, 68. 

• Wm. of Malmesibury, De Gestis Regum, II, 354. 
*Orderic, II, 258. 

•lb., Ill, 319. 

6 Gaimar, Lestorie des Engles, Rolls Series, 11. 63012^63014. 
'Orderic, II, 304. 

^Vita Anselmi, 350. Cf. ib., 351— "et quidem ille, sicut nevus Angliae 
civis." 



44 ENGLISH AND FRENCH IN ENGLAND, 1066-1100 

themselves as Englishmen is illustrated by the remarkable 
case of the historian Orderic. Bom near Shrewsbury in 1075 
of a mother who was all but certainly English and of a father 
who was a native of Orleans and chaplain to Roger, Earl of 
Shrewsbury, he was given the English name of his English 
godfather, the curate of the parish. He was sent to school 
to another EngHshman, Siward; and, although, from his tenth 
year on he lived in Normandy, he ever called himself an 
Englishman, "Angligena," and thought fondly of England 
as his native land. He speaks of his father sending him into 
exile, as if he had been a hateful stepson, and of his leaving 
his father-land, parents, relatives, and friends.^ This is the 
more remarkable in view of his describing himself as "bar- 
barusque et ignotus advena callentibus indigenis admixtus," 
when from the farthest confines of Mercia he came to Nor- 
mandy to study and to become the historian of the deeds of 
the Normans for the Normans. 

In view of these facts, it is clear I think, that not even from 
the first could there have been any great obloquy attached to 
the name Englishman. The distinction between Norman and 
Englishman in England continued to exist after 1 100, but we 
have seen that from 1066 the highest nobles and churchmen 
wefe sometimes called Englishmen, in the sense at least that 
they were subjects of the King of the English and held lands 
and offices in England. Those bom in England, even when 
of pure Norman descent, were ipso facto Englishmen, in a 
sense in which the word was then often used ; and men born in 
England of an English mother and a Norman father were 
doubly Englishmen. | If there was some contempt of English 
manners and criticism of the illiterate clergy, there was also 
admiration of England and of individual Englishmen, and we 
shall see that in practically every phase of life natives and 
foreigners were brought into close and often intimate asso- 
ciation with each other .\ 

• Orderic, V, 134 f. ; II, 301. 



Contact Between the Two Peoples 

Our study thus far, it is believed, has shown that there was 
no national poHtical unity or common racial sentiment, either 
on the part of the English or the Normans, such as would 
stand in the way of free intercourse between the two peoples; 
and it has incidentally illustrated some of the ways in which 
Normans and Englishmen were brought together in the first 
years of the new regime. It is now necessary to study more 
fully the various points of contact (between the two, and to 
show that the intercourse, if not always cordial or voluntary, 
was frequently and of necessity close. 

I Perhaps one of the commonest and earliest means of asso- 
ciation was through military service. I We have already cited 
the appearance of Englishmen and foreigners side by side in 
the expedition of Tostig in 1066, in the defence of Dover in 
1067, in the expedition against Exeter and in that against 
the sons of Harold and the Danes in Somerset in 1068. In 
1 07 1 William summoned his host, " French and English," 
against Hereward. That in campaigns such as these there 
was often close mingling of the two peoples is shown in the 
story of Hereward's night attack on a mixed force of French 
and English under Guy the Sheriff. The king's men were 
surprised while at meat in a tent, and of them twenty-six 
Normans and twelve English were slain by Hereward's party 
of eight. ^ In 1073 William led an English and French host 

1 Gaimar, 11, 5484-5546. 

45 



46 ENGLISH AND FRENCH IN ENGLAND, 1066-1100 

against Maine, " and the Englishmen did great damage thereto, 
destroying vineyards, burning towns, and laying waste the 
land." ^ The king's soiccess, we are told, was due chiefly to 
the English he had taken over with him.^ In 1075, during 
the rebellion of earls Ralph and Roger, we find English and 
French troops under Norman and English leaders fighting for 
the king. On the earl's side were "Earl Waltheof and 
bishops and abbots." But "the castlemen who were in Eng- 
land and also the folk of the land came against them."* 
Among the king's forces in the west are mentioned Wulfstan, 
the English bishop of Worcester, with a strong force; Aethel- 
wig, the English abbot of Evesham, with his vassals; Urse, 
sheriff of Worcestershire, and Walter de Lacy, with their own 
followers and a great number of the people. In the east were 
Odo, bishop of Bayeiix, and Geoffrey, bishop of Coutances, 
with a large army of English and Normans.* Again, in 1079- 
1080 William besieged his son Robert in the stronghold of 
Gerberoy in eastern Normandy with Normans, English, and 
auxiliaries from the neighborhood." 

In the reign of William II the most striking illustration of 
association through military action is found in the rebellion of 
1088. Freeman has said that " the campaign of 1088 was as 
much a war of Englishmen against Normans as the campaign 
of 1066." ^ 'But this is a misuse of terms, not to say of 
facts. Not only were there English troops on the barons' 
side, but barons and Norman as well as English soldiers on 

^A.S. Chron., E., 1073. 

2 Florence of Worcester, II, 10. Wm. of Malmesbury, De Gestis Regum, 
II, 316. 
^A. S. Chron., E. and D., 1075. 

* Florence of Worcester, II, 11. Lanfranc speaks of the latter force as 
" infinita multitudine Francigenarum et Anglorum." Epist. Lanfranci, 37. 

*Orderic, II, 387. 

* Norman Conquest, V, 79. 



CONTACT BETWiEEN THE TWO PEOPLES 47 

the king's side. " The principal Frenchmen who were in the 
land " aimed to betray the king to his brother Robert. Odo, 
Geoffrey of Countances, William of St. Carilef, Earl Roger, 
and "very many folk with them — all Frenchmen," were in 
the plot.^ Florence of Worcester mentions also Roger de 
Lacy, Ralph de Mortimer, and Ralph of Newmarket, who 
having assembled a great force of English, Normans, and 
Welsh burst into Worcestershire. In the crisis, bishop Wulf- 
stan prepared to defend the city of Worcester, and was be- 
sought by the Normans of the garrison to remove from the 
church into the castle, " for they loved him much. Such was 
his kindness of heart that, out of duty to the king and regard 
for them, he assented." ^ Thus at Worcester there were 
English, Normans, and Welsh fighting side by side in the 
cause of the rebels, and Normans and English on the side of 
the king. Incidentally, in this first-hand information from 
the chronicler of Worcester, who may very well have been an 
eye-witness (Florence died 11 18), we have an instance of 
the kindly relations that could and often did exist between 
Englishman and Norman. 

To resist the conspiracy the King, we are told, " sent 
after Englishmen," and " Englishmen flocked to his aid. . . . 
He sent over all England and bade every man who was not 
nithing to come to him against Rochester castle — ^French and 
English, from town and country." ^ The king's army con- 
tained as many Normans as he could muster, but consisted 
chiefly oif English. Part of the Norman nobles were on the 
king's side, " sed minima;" part favored Robert, "e|t 
maxima." Yet Lanfranc and nearly all the nobles of Kent 
were loyal.* Most of the bishops of England were alsoi with 

^A.S. Chron.,E., 1088. 

' Florence of Worcester, II, 24-25. 

M. S. Chron.,E., 1088. 

* Florence of Worcester, II, 21-24. 



48 ENGLISH AND FRENCH IN ENGLAND, 1066-1100 

the King, as were Hugh, Earl of Chester, William de 
Warenne, Robert Fitz-Hamon, and other experienced barons. 
And the great numbers of English who flocked to the king 
did so voluntarily/ That there was a considerable number 
of Normans with the king is shown by their pleading for his 
mercy in behalf of their relations and friends who were of the 
enemy at the surrender of Rochester.^ Thus in the struggle 
of 1088 the issue was not between French and English, but 
between rebels and royalists. The king appealed to all who 
were loyal, "French and English from town and country," 
and in the forces oif both parties we find both nationalities, 
represented by bishops, barons, and commons. 

In 1090 and 1091 we read of English and Normans fight- 
ing under the king for possession of Normandy. Robert and 
Philip, king of France, besieged the castle " thser thses cynges 
men of Engleland inne wseron." ^ At the chateau d'Eu 
Rufus is accompanied " cum ingenti Anglorum et Norman- 
norum exercitu." ^ In these instances " men of England " 
and " Anglorum " in all likelihood include men of both racesi 
from England, as opposed to the king's Norman allies of 
Normandy. 

In 1093 Duncan of Scotland returns to Scotland against 
Donald "with the aid of English and French," and the two 
parties are afterward reconciled on the stipulation that Duncan 
should "never again introduce English or French into the 
land." ^ In 1094 Welsh raids into the shires of Chester, 
Shrewsbury, and Hereford resulted in plundering of manors 
and killing of many English and Normans.® Thus English 

'Orderic, III, 271-273. 

' lb., Ill, 274-278. 

'A. S. Chron., E., 1090. 

* William of Jumieges, in Duchesne, 294. 
^A.S. Chron., 1093. 

* Florence of Worcester, II, 35. 



CONTACT BETWEEN THE TWO PEOPLES 49 

and Normans were living as well as fighting side by side. On 
the first crusade likewise we find Englishmen and Normans 
joined with troops from Maine, Anjou, and Brittany under 
the leadership of Robert of Normandy/ At Laodicea Robert 
with his mixed force is hailed by the native English refugees 
there, who had fled from England at the time of the con- 
quest, " as their natural friend and ally," ^ 

Thus from 1066 on we find English and Noirmans 'brought 
into contact through military service at home and abroad. The 
above cited instances are merely those in which the presence 
of men of both races in a military force happens to be de- 
fmitely mentioned. [But we can hardly doubt that in practi- 
cally every campaign in the reigns of the two Williams there 
were bo'th native and foreign troops.l Moreover, when in 1073 
the Conqueror took a mixed force abroad for the conquest of 
Maine, and the English on that occasion boasted of their 
ravaging the country, we have the beginning of an almost 
continuous series of conflicts between England and some part 
of what is now France, in which Englishmen and Normans of 
England and often of Normandy were united against a foreign 
enemy. In the reign of William II there was more internal 
disturbance than in the last years of the Conqueror, but in the 
conflicts between William II and Robert for possession of 
Normandy the union of Englishmen and Anglo'-Normans 
under "the king O'f the English" in the cause of foreign 
conquest continued to develop. It must be noted that before 
the end of the eleventh century the French were aliens tO' the 
Normans of England and of Normandy. Speaking of the 
misfortunes of Prince Henry in 1092, Orderic says he did 
not receive fraternal treatment at the hands of his brothers, 

*Wtii. of Malmesbury, De Gestis Regum, II, 402. Orderic, III, 555; 
IV, 70. 

* Freeman, Norniaii Conquest, V, 93. 



50 ENGLISH AND FRENCH IN ENGLAND, 1066-1100 

but as a foreigner, "externus," was obliged to seek the aid 
of foreigners, " id est Francorum et Britonum." ^ 

I In what may be called affairs of state and in legal proceed- 
ings, no less than in the army, there was contact between the 
two peoples, and likewise from the first, j At the surrender 
of London, Stigand *'cum potentissimis Anglis" received! 
William and his chief supporters. At the coronation in West- 
minster Abbey, Christmas 1066, we have seen Englishmen 
and Frenchmen officiating together, and together voicing their 
loud approval of the new king.^ At the feasts of Christmas, 
Easter, and Whitsuntide a large attendance of great land- 
owners, barons, and churchmen was required at the king's 
court, and that English and Normans were present at these 
gatherings is shown, for example, by Orderic's story of the 
king's warning each against the other at the Christmas co^urt 
of 1067.^ In the coimcil of 1070, when the dispute between 
Thomas of York and Lan franc of Canterbury as to the ques- 
tion of supremacy was argued, we are told that the foreigners) 
who were present were persuaded of the justice of Lanfranc'a 
cause, and that the English testified that his claims were legal.* 
In many charters of William I and William II we find Eng- 
lish and Norman witnesses side by side, who were thus pre-- 
sent at the court or council at which the charter was issued.^ 
For example, at Whitsuntide 1068, a royal diploma to Giso, 
bishop of Wells, is witnessed by the king and queen, the two 
English archbishops Stigand and Aldred, and by English and 
Norman bishops, earls, abbots, barons, stallers, etc., to the 

^Orderic, III, 384. 
-See above, p. 20. 
3* See above, p. 21. 

*Wni. of Malmesbury, Gesta Pontifiaim, 40. 

5 Examples in Regesta Rcgum Anglo-N ormannorum, vol. I, nos. 8, 10, 
22, 23, 34, 64, etc. 



CONTACT BETWEEN THE TWO PEOPLES 51 

total of forty-seven. Likewise, in the great ecclesiastical 
synods English and Norman bishops, abbots, and other 
churchmen came together for the transaction of church 
business. In the ''numerous" synod at Winchester, 1070, 
by which a number of English prelates were deposed, we find 
Wulfstan asserting his rights as against Aldred of York.^ 

jn the cha ncery of William I^ although no men of English 
descent seem actually to have been chancellor, " it is evident 
that the English element was strong." Some of the chartersi 
bear strong resemblance to similar Old English documents, and 
some of the writs " are Old English both in language and in 
form." "" In the household of William I. Ednoth and Bundi, 
the stallers, and Godric, dapifer, were Englishmen.^ 

In the courts of law, such as the King's Council sitting as 
the Curia Regis, and the shire courts, hundred courts, etc., we 
frequently find English and Normans acting together a^ 
judges, witnesses, or litigants. Eustace of Boulogne seems 
to have been tried by the King's Court in the presence o£ 
English and French.* In theory at least, the Curia Regis 
" consisted of the prelates, earls, and barons." ^ Among these 
the number of Englishmen would at first be considerable, but 
as English bishops and earls were displaced by Normans, the 
number would greatly decrease. In 1086 the Curia sitting in 
judgment of a private suit in Wiltshire ( ?) consisted of the 
king, his two sons William and Henry, " the two archbishops, 
eight bishops, two abbots, two counts, one earl, and eighteen 
barons," not one of whom was an Englishman." In the shire- 

^Florence of Worcester, II, 5. 

* Regesta, I, p. xvi. 

* lb., pp. xxii-xxiii. 

* William of Poitiers, 158. Neque sententia erravit dicta consensu An- 
glorum et Gallorum, qua de reatu convictus est. 

^ Regesta, p. xxviii and nos. 138, 139. 

* lb., p. xxix and no. 220. 



^2 ENGLISH AND FRENCH IN ENGLAND, 1066-1100 

courts Normans and Englishmen frequently came together. 
In 1086 Geoffrey, bishop of Coutances, as a special commis- 
sioner of the king, heard a suit between the English Wulf stan, 
Ibishop of Worcester, and the Norman Walter, abbot of 
Evesham, and decided in favor of the former/ In 1072 the 
same Geoffrey sat as justiciar in the shire-court of Kent in a 
suit by Lanfranc against Odo, earl of Kent, for the recovery 
of certain lands belonging to the see oi Canterbury. On this 
occasion the king ordered that all the Frenchmen of the county 
and Englishmen particularly familiar with local laws and 
customs should meet together. Special mention is made of 
Aethelric, deposed bishop of Chichester, who' was present by 
royal order, to give the court the benefit of his great knowledge 
of the laws of the land.^ In a suit by Lanfranc to recover 
certain lands in Cambridgeshire, many of the greater barons 
were summoned to London, and judgment was given "tam a 
Francis quam ab Anglis." ^ In 1080 at Keneteford, a joint 
session of the shire-courts of Cambridge, Essex, Hertford, 
and Huntingdon was held to inquire into certain rights of! 
Ely Abbey. Among those present with their men, French and 
English, were Baldwin abbot of St. Edmunds, Wulfwold 
abbot of Chertsey, Ulfchetel of Croyland, Alfwold of Holm; 
" legati " oif the king — Richard Fitzgilbert, Hamo Dapifer, 
Tihel de Herion; the sheriffs and their men — 'Picot, Eustace, 
Ralph, Walter, Harduin, Wido, Wimer, Wichumer, Odo, 
Godric, Norman, Colsuuein, Godwin, and many other respect- 
able knights of the four shires.* The duty of attending shire- 
court and hundred-court seems to have " depended on the pos- 

' lb., no. 22 [. 

*Eadmer, Historia Novorum, 17. Cf. Freeman, Norman Conquest, IV, 
364-366. 

'Freeman, ib., IV, 372. 

* Regesta, no. 122 and p. xxix. Cf. Historia Eli, 251 : plurimi milites 
probati Francigenae et Angli. 



CONTACT BETWEEN THE TWO PEOPLES 53 

session of a certain holding," and " the bishop of the shire 
was regularly associated with the sheriff in the presidency of 
the shire-court." ^ Thus, even apart from the practise of cal- 
ling French and English witnesses to testify to property rights, 
etc., the very composition and organization of the local courts 
were such as often to necessitate the cooperation O'f natives 
and foreigners in the capacity of judges. 
Tin 1070, it appears, French and English worked together 
on a compilation of the laws of the land. The king, through 
the council of his barons, caused to be summoned from all the 
shires of the realm English nobles noted for their wisdom and 
knowledge of the law, that he might hear from them what the 
laws of England in the time of Edward the Confessor were. 
Of these, twelve were selected as jurors to testify and swear 
to what the laws and customs of the realm were.^ The 
anonymous Chronicon Lichfeldense says that archbishop 
Aldred and Hugh bishop of London copied down this testi- 
mony with their own hands. Though Aldred died in 1069 
and Hugh became bishop only in 1075, the statement is not 
necessarily false. The fourth year of William's reign might, 
according to Norman views, have been as early as 1069 be- 
fore Aldred's death, for it was a fiction of the time that 
William's reign began with the death of Edward, January 5, 
1066; and Hugh may have served as a chaplain or secretary 
of the king before he was appointed bishop of London. 

How closely Englishmen and Frenchmen were often as- 
sociated in legal matters is admirably illustrated in the method 
of making the great survey of 1086. This has been investi- 
gated and described by Round.^ The commissioners of the 

^ Regesta, p. xxix f . 

* See preamble to so-called Leges Regis Edwardi Confessoris, Schmid, 
Die Gesetze der Angel-sachsen, 491. 

* Feudal England, pp. 1 18-123. 



54 ENGLISH AND FRENCH IN ENGLAND, 1066-1100 

king— "barones regis" — it seems, "attended every Hundred- 
Court, and heard the evidence, sometimes conflicting, of 
'French' and ' EngHsh.'" This Hundred-Court was of a 
special character, including the new settlers in the hundred, 
the Francigenae, with the old " deputations of the priest, reeve, 
and six villeins from each township." The juratores, i.e. 
tiiose Who actually gave the sworn verdict in behalf of the 
whole hundred, were eight in number, four English and four 
French; or in the case of double hundreds, sixteen, likewise 
half and half. All the other French and English of the hun- 
dred seem to have sworn, but the jurors were especially re- 
sponsible. Round remarks, "This fact, which would seem 
to have been hitherto overlooked, throws a flood of light on 
the compilation of the Survey, and admirably illustrates the 
King's policy of combining the old with the new, and fusing" 
his subjects, their rights and institutions, into one harmoni- 
ous whole." It is clear from the above that in these special 
Hundred-iCourts were gathered French and English of both 
high and low degree. Domesday Book gives instances of 
French and English giving identical testimony or conflicting 
testimony.^ That English as well as Norman commissioners 
heard testimony is seen in the fact that Remigius of London, 
Wulfstan of Worcester, and possibly Robert of Hereford 
\^l±Se among the bishops on commissions.^ 
I In the clerical and monastic life of the time, also, intimate 
contact between the two peoples is well illustrated. The in-^ 
flux of foreign churchmen, which .was tO' bring about a trans- 
formation of the English church,! began in the reign of 
Edward, and increased greatly with the arrival of William's 
army in 1066. Not only two bishops, Odo and Geoffrey, 

^Domesday Book, I, 32, 114; II, 18, 38b. 

* See W. H. Stevenson, A Contemporary Description of the Domesday 
Sirrvey, Eng. Hist. Review, XXII, 72. 



CONTACT BETWEEN THE TWO PEOPLES cc 

accompanied the troops, but many monks and clerics, " whose 
duty it was to fight with their prayers and counsels." ^ From 
that time on, large numbers of Norman and French clergy and 
monks came to England, and this influx of foreigners and 
the consequent intercourse between them and English church- 
men were aided by two facts of importance. First, the church 
in Normandy, from which the new leaders of the church in 
England were chiefly recruited, had but recently experienced 
a new inspiration and was undergoing, at the time of Lan- 
franc's arrival in England in 1070, a great reform in the direc- 
tion of greater regularity, stricter monasticism and a new en- 
thusiasm for learning, both religious and secular. The Norman 
churchmen found in England a splendid field in which to exer- 
cise their genius for organization, and their zeal enabled them to 
work the more harmoniously with Englishmen for a new and 
more glorious English church. Second, the English church 
was at the time in great need of reform. On this last point 
all the early writers agree. Orderic speaks of the illiteracy 
oi the English at the time of the conquest, and attributes it 
to the " long revel " of the Danes in England." Malmesbury 
says that the desire for literature and religion had decayed for 
many years before the coming of the Normans. The clergy, 
contented with little learning, could hardly stammer out the 
words of the sacraments, and he who knew grammar was an 
object of wonder. The Normans revived an interest in 
religion, which everywhere in England had become lifeless, 
and you might see churches in the villages and monasteries in 
the towns and cities, rise up in a new style of architecture.^ 
The same author speaks of Stigand, archbishop of Canter- 
bury, as an illiterate man ignorant of his deficiencies and 

' Orderic, II, 146. 

» Orderic, II, 206 ff. 

' De Gestis Regum, II, 304-306. 



^6 ENGLISH AND FRENCH IN ENGLAND, 1066-1100 

failing to distinguish properly between ecclesiastical and 
public affairs. Indeed, most of the English bishops, he re- 
marks, were likewise illiterate.^ We have a picture of the 
luxurious life of the clergy at Canterbury, who, before the 
reforms made by Lanfranc, lived like earls. ^ Monastic life 
also had greatly decayed. After reviewing the glorious past 
of the English church and recalling to mind her monks, 
bishops, and saints who were noted for learning and piety, 
Orderic attributes this to destruction caused by the Danish 
wars.^ Simeon of Durham speaks of the irregular and cor- 
rupt life of the clergy at Durham following upon the Danish 
wars, and says that with the coming of William the religion 
of churches and monasteries in England " recalesceret." * 
New Norman abbots and bishops often found the buildings 
neglected, and the monks few and poor. Lanfranc found 
St. Albans fallen into decay within and without. At Roch- 
ester the church, under its last English bishop, Siward, was 
ruined and empty; and at the latter's death in 1075, there were 
but four canons there, and these barely eked out a miserable 
existence. At the monastery of St. Peter in Gloucester, 
Serlo, the new abbot appointed by William I, found but few, 
inhabitants and only three monks. ^ 

With the coming of Lanfranc the work of reform began. 
Gandulf, made bishop of Rochester in 1077, rebuilt Rochester 
church, placed more than fifty monks there, strengthened the 
discipline, and provided necessities in abundance. Under 
Serlo, St. Peter's became famous. St. Albans and Ely were 
rebuilt, as was Canterbury, recently destroyed by fire. Lan- 

^ Gesta Pontificum, 36. 

2 Memorials of St. Dunstan, IRoUs Series, 237. 

•Orderic, II, 205 flf. 

* Historia Dunelmensis Ecclesia, 9. 

^Eadmer, Historic Novorum, 15; Malmesbury, Gesta PontiUcum, 136, 292, 



CONTACT BETWEEN THE TWO PEOPLES 57 

franc strove to renew religion among all classes of men 
through the whole realm/ Bishops, abbots, and earls brought 
about reform or established new foundations. Walcher at 
Durham, 1 071 -1080, increased regularity, discipline, and study. 
Walkelin, appointed to Winchester in 1070, added to the 
number of monks and buildings at Winchester.^ In 1078 
William de Warenne, afterward earl of Surrey, founded the 
Cluniac priory of St. Pancras at Lewes, and placed over it 
Lanzo, a monk of Cluny. In the same year Roger de Mont- 
gomery filled the deserted nunnery of Wenlock, in the diocese 
of Hereford, with monks from Cluny. In 1083 the same earl 
founded Shrewsbury and established there monks from the 
abbey of Seez in Normandy.^ Remigius of Fecamp, as bishop 
of Lincoln, filled St. Mary's church at Lincoln with many 
canons, and rebuilt the monasteries of St. Mary de Stou and 
of Bardney, c. 1086.* In 1093 Hugh, earl of Chester, re- 
stored the abbey of St. Werburgh, and established in it Bene- 
dictine monks, in place of the regular canons, under Richard, 
a monk of Bec.^ 

These and similar facts illustrate the extent to which monks, 
as well as bishops and abbots, from various parts of Normandy 
were established in England, even on the remote borders of 
Mercia and as far north as Durham. The revival of monastic 
life in England offered attractive opportunities to monks of, 
Normandy and encouraged them to come to England even 
when they were not specifically introduced to fill a vacant or 
depleted foundation. We read of brethren of St. Evroult 
who had left Normandy to better their fortunes, and obtained 

* Eadmer, Historia Novorum, 12. 

* Simeon, Historia Dunelmensis Ecclesia, 9; Malmesbury, Gesta PontiH- 
cum, 172. 

» Malmesbury, Gesta Pontiiicum, 207, 306; Orderic, III, 317 and II, 415 ff- 

* Malmesbury, Gesta Pontiiicum, 312. 
5 Orderic, III, 286. 



^8 ENGLISH AND FRENCH IN ENGLAND, 1066-1100 

promotions in England/ The rebuilding of decayed founda- 
tions and the erecting of new churches and abbeys necessitated 
the introduction of stone-masons and O'ther artisans from 
abroad. Odelirius, who had been given the old wooden 
church of St. Peter at Shrewsbury, when urging Robert de 
Montgomery, his patron, to erect a stone abbey in its stead, 
promises to advance £15 as a beginning as soon as the monks 
arrive with masons to lay the foundations.^ Many things led 
to much intercourse between the monasteries and churches 
of England and of Normandy. Numerous grants of lands and 
rents were made to abbeys in Normandy, which sometimes 
necessitated Norman abbots visiting England.^ We read, too, 
of ships from England laden with supplies for the abbey of 
Bee* That it was not uncommon for men of pure English 
or of mixed descent to enter the monasteries of Normandy or 
France is shown by Alfgar's, one of Harold's brothers, be- 
coming a monk at Rheims,^ and by the case of Orderic and 
possibly of Hugh the Englishman. 

That there was some friction between certain of the new* 
abbots and the monks, English and foreign, is clear. But 
complaints against bishop or abbot are in almost every case 
on the ground of worldliness, or cruelty, or corruption, not 
on the ground oi nationality. On the other hand, many of 
the new rulers of English churches and abbeys commanded 
the respect and love oi those they governed, whether French 
or English. Lanfranc, though a foreigner, was received with 
the greatest joy by the people of all Albion, and gained a re- 
putation for generosity to the monks of Canterbury, their 

•Orderic, III, 18. 

•Orderic, II, 419. 

•Orderic, III, 18 ff. Eadmer, Vita Anselmi, 348. 

*Eadmer, Vita Anselmi, 347. 

* Orderic. II, 152. 



CONTACT BETWEEN THE TWO PEOPLES 59 

parents and brothers/ Thomas, a canon of Bayeux, made 
archbishop of York in 1070, is praised by Malmesbury, a 
writer who does not hesitate to denounce evil where he finds 
it, as a man of integrity, blameless in word and deed, who 
was perhaps only too generous to his clergy. The same 
author lacks words to do justice to- the work and character of 
Lanzo of Cluny, prior of St. Pancras at Lewes. ^ William of 
St. Carilef, made bishop of Durham in 1080, is praised for 
his gentle but firm rule; and his return to Durham in 109 11 
after a temporary banishment is the occasion of general re- 
joicing, especially by the " plebs." " Likewise, on the occasion 
of his enthronement at Canterbury in 1093, Anselm is re-' 
ceived with great enthusiasm by monks, clerics, and people.* 

jWe have many instances of Englishmen and foreigners 
working together in the church in an intimate and friendly 
way for the welfare of church and realm. | Wulfstan, the last 
of the English bishops, takes his place fearlessly in the King'sl 
Council, where he maintains his rights against Aldred of 
York. Although criticized by Lanfranc for his lack of learn- 
ing, he is praised for his eloquence in extempore preaching; 
through him Lanfranc was led to persuade the king to abolish 
the slave trade between Bristol and Ireland; and he is con- 
sulted by Anselm as a man especially learned in the laws and 
customs of England.^ In his own household he combined 
English traditions and Norman customs. He allowed drink- 

'Orderic, II, 213; Eadmer, Historia Novorum, 13. 

' Gesta Pontificum, 257, 207. 

3 Simeon, Historia Dunehnensis Ecclesia, 125 ; Historia Regum, II, 341. 
A. S. Chron. E compares him with Judas Iscariot, probably because he 
joined the rebellion in 1088, and not, as the editor of Simeon surmises, be- 
cause the chronicler hates him as a Norman. 

*EIadmer, Historia Novorum, 41. 

* Malmesibury, Gesta Pontificum, 284. Eadmer, Historia Novorum, 46. 
See also Ramsay, Foundations of England, II, 202. 



6o ENGLISH AND FRENCH IN ENGLAND, 1066-1100 

ing in his hall "pro more Anglorum." He continued his 
English habit of saying grace before drink, even in the pre- 
sence of the Curia Regis and at the king's table. After the 
manner of the Normans, he had in his household an array of 
men-at-arms, who consumed much of his income. Among! 
the closest of his friends was Robert of Lorraine, bishop of 
Hereford.^ 

In Histo-ria et Cccrtulariwn Monasterii Glouce^friae,^ is 
found an interesting document in English which has been 
described as "a sort of spiritual confederation'" between 
Wulfstan, bishop of Worcester; Aethelwig, abbot of Eves- 
ham; Wulfwold, abbot of Chertsey; Aelfsige, abbot of Bath; 
Edmund, abbot of Pershore; Ralph, abbot of Winchcombe; 
and Serlo, abbot of Gloucester. In this, two abbots of foreign 
birth join with five English churchmen in a pact drawn up in 
the English tongue to obey God, St. Mary and St. Benedict, 
to be loyal to king William and queen Matilda, and to be in 
unity as if all these seven minsters were one minster. At 
Durham, Leofwine, apparently an Englishman, and Gilbert, 
a foreigner, worked side by side high in the counsels ot a 
foreign bishop of Durham and earl of Northumberland, 
Walcher of Lorraine. Under Walcher's successor, William 
of St. Carilef, 1081-1096, at least three Englishmen held high 
office; Leofwine was his secretary, and Aldwine and Turgot 
were successively prior, the ^o^^ i^«ing described as an English- 
man of no mean birth.^ At Abingdon we find Ethelelm, the 
foreign abbot who derided English saints, employing Sacolus, 
Godric, and Alfwin, English monks, in opposing claims of the 
king's officers, because of their eloquence, their knowledge of 
secular affairs, and their memory of past events.* Likewise, 

* Malmesbury, Gesta PontiUcum, 281-282, 301 ff. 
'Vol. Ill, p. xviii. 

' Simeon, Historia Regum, 1, 123, 127, 129 ; II, 202. 
4 Chronicon Monasterii de Abingdon, II, 2. 



CONTACT BETWEEN THE TWO PEOPLES 6 1 

when the church of Sutton is transferred to Abingdon in the 
reign oif William Rufus, the king recommends that abbot 
Rainald, a foreigner, should retain the English clerk of that 
church, Alfwi, because of his great knowledge of the laws of 
the land. The agreement to this effect is witnessed by Nor- 
mans and English, the latter on the part of Alfwi/ 

(Contact between the two peoples is illustrated also in what 
may be described as social and commercial intercourse, j We 
have cited such public or semi-public events as the coironation 
of William, and the assembling of the king's court at the chief 
festivals of the year as instances of the gathering of French 
and English under one roof. The significant point is that 
though these latter occasions were assemblies of magnates for 
the transaction of public business, they alsoi of necessity in- 
volved considerable social intercourse attendant on the cele- 
bration of the festivals of Christmas, Easter, and Whitsun- 
tide. At the Christmas court of 1067, the English and French 
mingled together on what, outwardly at least, appeared to be 
friendly terms." The Englishmen of high position who were 
taken to Normandy on William's first visit after Hastings, 
though actually hostages and prisoners of state, were treated 
as royal guests and evidently came into close social contact 
with the nobles of Normandy and of some of the neighboring 
countries. One of these hostages, Edgar the Atheling, after 
later rebelling against the king, was received by him in 1074 
in Normandy "mid micclan weorthscype," and in 1091 fared 
into Normandy again with Robert, with whom he became 
fast friends and afterwards a companion on the first crusade.* 
Other instances of friendship between the Normans and 
Englishmen of rank are found in the cases oif Copsige, Edwin, 

^Ib., II, 27-29. ; 

'Orderic, II, 178. 

* A. S. Chron., D. 1075, E. 1091. 



62 ENGLISH AND FRENCH IN ENGLAND, 1066-1100 

and Waltheo'f . Copsige, a man distinguished by his birth and 
power, is described as being particularly pleasing to the king 
and the Norman nobles because of his bravery and honesty. 
Indeed, his loyalty and friendship to the Normans led toi hisi 
being murdered " comprovincialibus " (1067 or 1068), and 
the Norman writers considered him to be a martyr to hisi 
fidelity/ Edwin, earl of Mercia, is said to have been pro- 
mised the king's daughter in marriage, but the king, being 
misled by envious Normans, refused the youth the lady he had 
long loved and awaited.^ When the earl was slain in 1071, the 
Normans and French lamented his loss as that of a com- 
panion or kinsman.^ Waltheof, earl of Northumberland, who 
was married to the king's niece Judith, was a close friend o^f 
Walcher, bishop of Durham, and, seated with the bishop in 
the synod of the presbyters, humbly and obediently carried 
out whatever the bishop determined upon for the furtherance 
of religion in his earldom.* 
I That there was much intermarrying between the twoi 
races, even from the first, is indisputable. \ In the major- 
ity of cases the union would be between a Norman man 
and an English woman, for it is improbable that many women 
came to England from Normandy. Orderic, it is true, tells 
us that in 1068 Matilda came to England "cum ingenti 
frequentia viro'rum ac nobilium feminarum," and that in the 
next year the king sent her back to Normandy.^ Presumably 
the ladies who had come in her train returned with her, though 
no mention is made of the fact. The same author tells a story 
of the Norman women summoning their husbands back from 

*Wm. of Poitiers, 148, 158. Orderic, II, 176. 

* Orderic, II, 182. 
'lb., II, 216-217. 

* Simeon, Historia Regum, II, 200. 
"Orderic, II, 181, 188. 



CONTACT BETWEEN THE TWO PEOPLES 63 

England, c. 1068, they themselves fearing tO' pass the sea, 
especially to a land full of strife/ Certain improbabilities in 
this story have been pointed out," but there is no reason td 
doubt that though Norman matrons remained at home during 
the first years of turmoil, some of them may have joined their 
husbands later in England. Yet there is little certain evidence 
of the presence oi Norman women in England. That 
Adelaide, second wife of Roger de Montgomery, was in Eng- 
land at least occasionally seems likely from her close associa- 
tion with her husband's well-known benefactions in Shrews- 
'bury. We know that Gundrede, wife of William de Warenne, 
was buried in St. Pancras Priory, Lewes, which she and her 
husband founded.^ That few unmarried women came into 
the country seems to be indicated by the many marriages be- 
tween the conquerors and English women. Malmesbury men- 
tions as a prominent characteristic of the Normans their 
marrying with their vassals.* We know also that sometimes 
grants of English lands to Normans included the hand of the 
widow or daughter of the former holder.^ And many in- 
dividual cases might be cited of Norman nobles marrying 
English women of rank. Thus, Robert O'f Oily and Miles 
Crispin married daughters of Wigod of Wallingford, and 
Robert of Oily the younger married a woman whose name 
Edith points to probable English birth.*' There are instances 
of Englishmen marrying Norman women. Matthew of Paris, 
indeed, states that it was William's policy to marry English- 
men to women of Normandy and Normans to English women 

'lb., II, 185. 

* Norman Conquest, IV, 231. 
*Orderic, II, 412 f . ; III, 317. 
^De Gestis Regum, II, 306. 

* See Ramsay, Foundations of England, II, 46. 
^Norman Conquest, IV, 46. 



64 ENGLISH AND FRENCH IN ENGLAND, 1066-1100 

of good birth. That this is probably true is shown by Wil- 
liam's giving his niece Judith to earl Waltheof, and by the 
reported promises of the king to give his daughter Matilda to 
Edwin and his daughter Agatha to Harold/ 

Intermarrying would be more usual among those Oif less 
than the highest rank. One of the most interesting instancesi 
of the way in which foreigners of the middle classes married 
and settled down in England, identified themselves closely with 
the land and its inhabitants, and even came to look upon their 
former coimtry as a foreign one, is that of Odelirius, the 
father of the historian Orderic. We possess unusually full 
information concerning his position, his life, and his family 
in England, which enables us to see how close the relations 
between the two peoples often were. A native of Orleans, 
Odelirius followed Roger de Montgomery, afterward earl of 
Shrewsbury, to England and became the latter's chaplain and 
" faithful counsellor." We do not know certainly that he 
married an English woman, but everything points toward that 
probability. We do know that three sons were born to him in 
England, of whom Orderic, the eldest, was born in 1075 at 
Attingham on the Severn near Shrewsbury. Odelirius, him- 
self a priest, was on intimate terms with English priests in the 
neighborhood. Orderic was baptized by the presbyter Orderic, 
from whom he was named; and at five years of age he was 
placed under the distinguished priest — " insignis presbyter " — * 
Siward, who for five years instructed him in "carmentis 
Nicostratae litteras" and in psalms, hymns, and other essen- 
tials. The father info'rmed his patron Roger that having 
sent his eldest son to a liberal teacher to be initiated into the 
mysteries of letters, he had procured a place for him at St. 
Evroult in Normandy and destined him to banishment over the 
sea, in order that as a willing exile the son might, among 

^Orderic, II, 391. 



CONTACT BETWEEN THE TWO PEOPLES 65 

foreigners, serve heaven free from parental care and harmful 
affections. If the son reports the father accurately, we here 
have a native of Orleans and a follower of one of the chief 
of the Norman lords of England, who as early as 1085 has so 
fully identified himself with his new home that the Normans 
of No'rmandy, are strangers or foreigners' — ^"exteros" — ^and 
to send his son to Normandy is to send him " in exilium." It 
is significant also that to this French priest and counsellor of 
a great Norman lord, who is himself spoken of as " vir ingenio 
et facundia et litterarum eruditione praepollens" and who 
had been to Rome, the English priest Siward, on the remote 
borders of Mercia, is " liberali didascalo." Odelirius and 
his youngest son Benedict became monks in the abbey at 
Shrewsbury which the father had been active in founding.^ 

The above story illustrates, among other things, contact 
between the two peoples in one of the English towns. That 
jthe coinditions of foreign settlement in castles and towns 
throughout England were often conducive to close intercourse 
between Frenchmen and Englishmen is clear.] The first castlesi 
in England were built in the Confessor's reign.^ Domesday 
mentions fifty castles in England and Wales, and we are told 
there is good authority for thirty-seven additional castles in 
existence before the end of the eleventh century." Castles are 
found from Arundel in the south to Newcastle in the North, 
from Dover to Exeter, from Norwich to Shrewsbury and 
Montgomery. That each of these would be a nucleus of foreign 
influence is clear. Not only was each the stronghold of a 
Norman lord, garrisoned by foreign troops, but each became a 
center to which foreigners would be attracted as a place of 

' Orderic, II, 416-420; V, 133 ff. 

* One certainly, perhaps two, in Herefordshire ; possibly a third in the 
North. See A. S. Chron., E, 1048 (= 1051) ; Round, Feudal England, 320. 

'Mrs. E. Armitage, Early Norman Castles of England, Eng. Hist. Rev,, 
XIX, 19, 209, 417. 



^ ENGLISH AND FRENCH IN ENGLAND, 1066-1100 

security for trade and other purposes. Troops were brought 
from abroad for the special purpose of garrisoning the new 
strongholds/ It is highly probable that many of these re- 
mained in the land as permanent settlers, especially since they 
seem to have been rewarded.^ No doubt most of these early 
castles were small, but sometimes the garrison seems to have 
been large. In 1068 William erected two castles or forts at 
York and placed in them five hundred men.^ This is pro- 
bably not a great exaggeration, for there were two castles and 
the district was turbulent. , 

Of the eighty-seven castles existing before 11 00, thirty- 
eight were attached to towns, some inside the walls, some 
just beyond. In these cases it was often necessary to 
make room for the castle by destroying houses^ — a procedure 
that occasioned frequent complaint. But the fact that the 
castle was thus set down in the midst of the town meant that 
close intercourse between the two peoples would necessarily 
develop in practically all phases of the town's life. Moreover, 
in spite of the destruction of houses, the value of the manor 
and town had in many cases risen, often greatly, between the 
time of Edward and the taking of the Survey. At Lincoln 
116 houses had been destroyed to make room for an unusually 
large castle, yet the value of Lincoln had risen from 3o£. 
T.R.E. to 1 10 f . at the time of the Survey. At York one of 
the two wards of the city was laid waste to make room for two 
castles, but the value of York had risen from 53 £. to 100 £. 
Rhuddlan, in the time of king Edward and when Hugh, earl 

^Wm. of Poitiers, 148. "Custodes in castellis strenuos vires collocavit, 
ex Gallis traductos, quorum fidei pariter ac virtuti credebat, cum multi- 
tudine peditum et equitum." 

» lb., " Ipsis opulenta beneficia distribuit, pro quibus labores ac pericula 
libentibus animis tolerarent. Nulli tameri! Gallo datum est quod Anglo 
cuiquam injuste fuerit ablatum." 

' Florence of Worcester, II, 2. 



CONTACT BETWEEN THE TWO PEOPLES 6/ 

of Chester, received it, was waste; at the time of the Survey- 
it was valued at 23 £. 13 s. Rochester had risen in value from 
100 s. to 20 £. "Evidently," it is pointed out, "something 
has caused a great increase o^f prosperity .... and it can 
hardly be anything else than the impetus given to trade by the 
security afforded by a Norman castle." ^ 

The nobleman who built a castle would be very likely to 
establish a borough near it. It would be a source of income 
to him and a protection for Norman settlers. At Rhuddlan, 
for example, a borough was established as soon as the castle 
was built. At Norwich and at Nottingham " new " boroughs 
are mentioned — the quarters inhabited by the Normans.^ In- 
deed, "a grand scheme of burghal colonization, initiated by 
the Conqueror's tenants-in-chief " through the establishment 
of " colonies of chapmen, garrison and market towns," has 
been discovered through a study of the origin of certain privi- 
leges granted hy Norman lords to the boroughs they estab- 
lished in England.^ William Fitz-Osbem, it seems, intro^- 
duced the Laws of Breteuil into England at Hereford for hisi 
French tenants. There we find a French borough and an 
English borough, the French burgesses enjoying certain pri- 
vileges. At Rhuddlan, in the new borough, there were 
eighteen burgesses at the time of Domesday, and to these 
" apply the laws and customs of Hereford and Breteuil" At 
Shrewsbury, Domesday Book records forty-three French 
burgesses, likewise living under special law. Traces of the 
same laws are found in many other places — Drogheda in 
Meath, Ellesmere and Burf ord in Shropshire, Denbigh, Breck- 
nock, Cardiff, Carmarthen, Montgomery, Okehamton, etc.* 

• Mrs. Armitage, Eng. Hist. Rev., XIX, 236, 445-447, 420-421. 
*Ib., 240, 421-422. 

» Miss Bateson, The Laws of Breteuil, Eng. Hist, Rev., XV, 73, 302, 496, 
754; XVI, 92, 332. 
*Ib., XV, 306-316, 516. 



68 ENGLISH AND FRENCH IN ENGLAND, 1066-1100 

Traces of the Laws of Breteuil in the charter of a borough. 
are not necessarily indications that French or Norman bur- 
gesses were settled there in the eleventh century, for the Laws 
were sometimes adopted by purely English boroughs. But in 
many cases, the evidence comes from Domesday Book, and in 
these we may with practical certainty infer the presence of 
French burgesses, even when they are not specifically men- 
tioned. 

The introduction of the Laws of Breteuil at Hereford pointsi 
to the French burgesses' coming from Breteuil or thereabouts. 
William Fitz-Osbem had been intrusted with the castle of 
Breteuil by William in 1060, and when he was granted Here" 
ford after the conquest, burgesses from Breteuil seem to have 
followed him to England. The French burgesses at Hereford 
are granted the same protection from his exactions as they en- 
joyed in the Norman home.^ It is clear also that the enjoy- 
ment by French burgesses of a low amercement was no dis- 
crimination against natives. It was a measure to encourage 
colonization by giving the colonists the benefits of the law they 
were accustomed to. 

jOn the whole the number of Normans who settled in the 
towns seems to have been large. j Apparently they began to 
come in the reign of Edward. The charter granted to Lon- 
don by William in 1066, is addressed in English to William, 
bishop of London, Gosfregth the portreeve, and all the bur- 
ghers, French and English, and grants them all the laws of 
which they were worthy in King Edward's day." The pre- 
sence of foreign merchants at Greenwich in the time of Ed- 
ward is indicated by certain privileges granted them, which 

» Ih., XVI, 92-93- 

^ Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum, I, no. 15. Cf. no. 85, addressed 
to Bishop William, Swegen, sheriff of Essex, and his beloved subjects of 
London, French and English. 



CONTACT BETWEEN THE TWO PEOPLES 6o 

were afterward confirmed by William.' Mention is made of 
Jews from Rouen settling in London after the conques;.^ 
Orderic, writing oi about 1071, mentions English and NoJ- 
mans living together peacefully " in burgis, castris, et urbibus," 
and adds that one might see some o^f the villages and town 
fairs full of French merchandise and traders.^ Domesday 
Book sometimes indicates the number of French burgesses in 
the towns. In Shrewsbury forty-three French burgesses hold 
houses; in Northampton in the new burgh there are forty 
burgesses in the king's demesne; in Southampton there are 
sixty-five French and thirty-one English hospitati; Frenchmen 
hold 145 houses in York, etc.* That the French element was 
strong in the Cinque Ports is probable, if, as seems likely, the 
confederation was derived from Picardy, — "an offshoot of 
the communal movement in Northern France." ^ The number 
and importance of the French merchant class is indicated by 
the strong probability that the Merchant Gild, of which no 
mention is found in records of the Anglo-Saxon period, was a 
" new institution directly transplanted from Normandy " soon 
after the conquest.^ 

In addition to French merchants and other burgesses, there 
were French artisans, craftsmen, farmers and the like, espec- 
ially on the manors. Stonemasons probably came in from 
abroad in considerable numbers. Of the castles and new 
churches erected in this period some at least were in stone. 
Stone keeps were built at London and Colchester, and special 

' lb., no. 141. 

* Wm. of Malmesbury, De Gestis Regum, II, 371, note 2. 

'Orderic, II, 214-215. Vicos aliquot aut fora urbana Qallicis mercjbus 
et mangonibus referta conspiceres. 

* D. B., I, 252, 219, 52, 298. 

* Round, Feudal England, 558 f. Round places the establishment of the 
corporation " as not earlier than a generation at least after the Conquest." 

* Gross, Gild Merchant, 1, 4. 



70 



ENGLISH AND FRENCH IN ENGLAND. 1066-1100 



mention is made of a new stone castle built at Rochester for 
\A' illiam II by Gundulf, bishop of Rochester, a man of great 
ssill in masonry.^ Oxen to haul stone to the church at 
Brabfortune in Worcestershire are mentioned in Domesday.^ 
New styles of architecture point to foreign architects, and that 
foreign masons came in is shown by Odelirius's expectation 
of the arrival of monks and masons to build the new stone 
abbey at Shrewsbury.^ 

In Domesday Book are to be found many men of French 
name and miscellaneous occupations. Whether these are 
Frenchmen, or Englishmen with French names, it is often im- 
possible to say. We know that Englishmen early began to 
adopt French names, but it is unlikely that they had done sa 
in any great numbers by 1086. The following are typical: 
Cooks — Humphrey, Tezelin, Ansger, Manassis, Gilbert.* 
Carpenters — Stephen, Durand, Rayner, and two carpentarii 
regis who hold de rege.^ Barber — Durand." Porter — ^Milo'.'^ 
Falconer — ^Bernard.* Hunters — ^Croch, Roger, Robert, Gil- 
bert, Ralph, Go'zelin, Richard.® Foresters — Richard and a for- 
cstarius regis}'^ Fisherman — ^Osbern.^^ Mention is also made 
of Francigenae senientes. Whether these are tenants in ser- 
geantry or Frenchmen of menial position is not clear. A typical 

> Mrs. Armitage, Eng. Hist. Rev., XIX, 209, 425, 452-455- 
«D. B., I, 175b. 

3 Ante, p. 58. , 

*D. B., I, 162b, 170, 36b, 73b, 98b, 229. 
* D. B., I, 73b, 85, 187b, 202 ; II, 279b. 
«D. B., I, 49- 
'D. B., I, 49b. 
8D. B., I, 163. 

'D. B., I, 49, 176, 242, 242b, 244b, 267, i86b, 238. 
"D. B., I, 244b, 250b, 74. 
»D. B., I, 2i6b. 



CONTACT BETWEEN THE TWO PEOPLES yi 

entry h — '' In demesne there are 2 teams with one serf, and 
II villeins and 4 socmen with 4 bordiers and 9 French ser- 
znentes have 10 teams among them all." ^ 

That there were many obscure Frenchmen having small 
holdings or scattered here and there on the manors in two's! 
and three's as srriall farmers seems to be clear. Domesday 
Book contains frequent references to Francigenae on manor 
lands. They seem to have been numerous in Hertfordshire, 
Worcestershire, Herefordshire, and Shropshire. In Here- 
fordshire I have found nameless Frenchmen on nineteen, 
manors. On the other hand, in the whole shire of Bucking- 
ham there is mentioned only one such Frenchman. But how^ 
numerous they were in certain places is shown by the mention 
of thirteen such Frenchmen on a single page of Domesday ^ 
and eleven on another.^ To attempt any generalizations as 
to the number or distribution of such new settlers is unwise, 
for in the case of Domesday Book the argument ex silentia 
is unsafe. Certain conclusions can be drawn, however, aSi 
to their position, their occupation, and their relation to other, 
and especially English, occupants of the land. 

That they were not soldiers but farmers is indicated by 
two facts. First, Frenchmen who are soldiers are, at least 
sometimes, described as such. Thus, " a Frenchman and a 
certain Englishman have 4 hides and are milites prohati." 
"Of this manor, 4 French milites hold what is valued at I2£. 
per annum." " Now there are 34 milites between French 
and English, and under them 22 bordiers," — in St. Edmunds- 
bury.* Second, in almost all instances the Francigenae are 
mentioned in connection with the land, as having teams, often 

»D. B.. I, 232b. 

D. B., I, 135b. — 'Hertfordshire. 

'D. B., I, 23b. — Sussex. 

D. B., I, 130, 12; II, 372. 



72 ENGLISH AND FRENCH IN ENGLAND^ 1066-1100 

together with villeins, bordiers, and cotters. Typical entries 
are: "There are 5 villeins with i Frenchman and 6 bordiers 
have 5 teams, and two could be added." " There 33 villeins 
with 2 priests and i soldier and 2 Frenchmen have 16 teamsl 
and one could be added." " In demesne there is i hide and 

1 team and 4 villeins with 3 bordiers have 6 teams and with 
these are 7 socmen and a certain Frenchman." " There t' 
Frenchman and 4 bordiers return 25 d." " There is i French- 
man with I team." " There i Frenchman with i team returns 6 
shillings." " In demesne there is i team and 2 bovarii and i 
Frenchman and 3 bordarii with 2 teams." " In demesne are 

2 teams and 4 serfs and i ancilla and 16 villeins with 7 bor- 
diers and I miles with 3 Frenchmen have 5 teams." ^ Some- 
times the Frenchmen are mentioned after villeins, bordiers, 
socmen, etc. ; sometimes they are entered first. It would seem 
that the new settlers are especially designated as Francigenae 
because they are not serfs, villeins, bordiers, cotters, socmen, 
nor even liberi homines. That is, as newcomers on the land 
they do not belong to any of the old groups, and are therefore 
distinguished from these as are the priest, the reeve, the smith, 
or the carpenter.^ In any case, it would seem that many of 
the Francigemae are small farmers having holdings often no 
larger than those of villeins or bordiers or cotters, and that 
they were thus in close contact with Englishmen of low rank. 
In certain instances, the French tenant has men under him: 
" Of this manor a certain Frenchman holds land for i team 
and there has 2 bordiers." " Of this land 2 Frenchmen hold 
I virgate and a half and there have 5 bordiers." " Two 
Frenchmen have i hide and a half. Under them remain 
(manent) 3 men." But in the great majority of cases, these 

ID. B., I, 138b, 145b, 180, 181, 182b, i8sb, 232b. 
' See, for a good' example, D. B., I, 187. 
*D. B., I, 3b, 23b, 129, 



CONTACT BETWEEN THE TWO PEOPLES 



73 



Francigenae are apparently neither over anyone nor under 
anyone; they are grouped with so many villeins, bordiers, 
cotters, socmen, and the like, or with these and the priest or 
reeve — the whole group having so many teams. How closely 
Englishmen and Frenchmen were brought together on the 
manors is forcefully suggested by such an entry as this: 
" There 38 villeins with a priest and reeve of the manor and 
with 3 Frenchmen and 2 Englishmen have 26 teams and a 
half, and there are 27 bordiers and 12 cotters and 9 serfs. 
Under the Frenchmen and Englishmen are 32 men between 
villeins and bordiers." ^ 

» D. B., I, i38b^Hertfordshire. 



VI 

The Use of French^ English, and Latin 

To the student of language, the question of most moment 
raised by a study of the points of contact between the two 
peoples is what effect did such contact have upon the three 
important languages used in the realm. What was the status 
of English, French, and Latin in the latter half of the eleventh 
century ? 

References to the use of the different tongues are few. 
Even when it is noted that on this or that occasion a certain 
churchman addressed an assembly, no word is said of the 
language used. At Rockingham Council in 1095, attended 
by bishops, abbots, barons, and numbers of monks, clerics, and 
laymen, Anselm delivered an address, and we may feel fairly 
certain that he spoke in Latin, — yet he may have used French- 
The king was present at several of the sittings of this council 
and addressed the bishops and barons. '^ Did he use French? 
Probably, for it seems that he did not know English,^ and as 
he is described by Malmesbury as an unlettered man who had 
neither inclination nor leisure to attend to learning, it is most 
likely that he was ignorant of Latin.^ If the king spoke in 
French, the probability becomes stronger that Anselm also 
spoke in French, especially since we have other evidence which 
points to the regular use of French at the meetings of the 

Eadmer, Historia Novorum, 53-54. 
2 See below, p. 76. 
*De Gestis Regum, II, 374. 
74 



THE USE OF FRENCH, ENGLISH, AND LATIN yc 

jk'mg's council. If French was used, the presumption is strong 
that Englishmen present — and some of the abbots were cer- 
tainly English — were able to understand, if not to speak, 
French./ But the whole question is obscure. We are told 
that Herman, monk of Bury, had been wont tO' preach the 
divine word to the people — "popuHs"; and in 1095 on the 
occasion of the translation of St. Edmund at Bury, bishop 
Walkelin, of Winchester, preached to the people in the church- 
yard.^ Did they peach in English or in French? 

The question is the more interesting in view of the numer- 
ous instances of Frenchmen and Englishmen coming into such 
close contact of one kind or another as must have necessitated 
the use of one tongue, French or English, or a knowledge of 
both tongues on the part of at least some persons present. 
In what manner did persons of the two races communicate 
who intermarried? Through what means was the testimony 
of English and French witnesses taken in the shire and hun- 
dred courts on such occasions as the great survey of 1086? 
In which tongue did Walcher converse with Leofwine or 
Ligulf ? or Wulfstan with Robert of Hereford? What of Eng- 
lish and French monks in the same abbey? of soldiers sitting 
at meat together in a tent? of French-speaking masons and 
builders utilizing native English workmen in building castles 
and churches? What of stewards, reeves, and villeins in 
the manor courts and on the manor lands? On these and 
similar conditions some light perhaps can be thrown. But the 
problem is rendered more complicated by the fact that in the 
whole period there are but few references to interpreters. 
Orderic says that the Conqueror attempted to learn English in 
order that he might hear the complaints of his English sub- 
jects without the use of an interpreter.^ In the time of Wil- 

'^ (Samson, in Mem. St. Edmunds Abbey, I, 158, 173. 
* Orderic, II, 215. 



76 ENGLISH AND FRENCH IN ENGLAND, 1066-1100 

liam II we read of a " Gillebertus, qui cognominabatur Latemer 
(id est, Interpres.)'" Ansgot interpres, Hugclin interpres, 
and Lefwin Latinarius, are mentioned in Domesday Book.^ 

It must be borne in mind in this connection that in the 
middle ages the acquisition of languages seems to have been 
easier than it is now. The constant travelling back and forth 
through all Christendom familiarized men with foreign 
tongues, and the wide-spread use of Latin no doubt made 
French less difficult to lettered Englishmen. Moreover, in 
1066 there must have been many men in England who could 
speak French and English. From the time when three 
daughters of Edward the Elder married into the nobility of 
France in the early tenth century, and English monasticism, 
chiefly through the influence of Fleury, had experienced the 
Benedictine reform, there had been more or less of a tradi- 
tion of French influence in English court and monastic life, 
which was only partly interrupted by the Danish reigns. \Ln 
the reign of the Confessor there were many Normans in 
England, and the English court was largely Normanized.j 
William, bishop of London, appointed by Edward in 1051, 
must certainly have known English by 1066. That kingi 
Harold knew French there is strong probability, in view of 
his travels abroad and his intimate companionship with Wil- 
liam while in Normandy.^ Earl Ralph of Hereford, bom 

^ Chron. Monas. de Abingdon, II, 34. Latomer or Latjmier = Latinarius. 
Barber, British Family Names, 72. 

» D. B., I, 36b, 99, 180. 

'Cf. Wace's account of the messages between William and Harold be- 
fore Hastings. Roman de Rou, 11. 6833/34. Wace specifically says Har 
old's answer was in French. Either Harold or the English messenger he 
sent to William must ihave known French. The latter is represented as 
■ speaking to William himself, both alone and in the council of the Norman 
leaders. (Wm. of Poitiers, 128-129.) He may have been a Norman settler 
who had been in the land long enough to consider himself, or to be con- 
sidered, an Englishman and to have learned the English tongue. 



THE USE OF FRENCH, ENGLISH, AND LATIN yy 

of a mother half English and half No'rman, and who seems to 
have come to England with Edward when he returned from 
his " exile " in Normandy, may well have spoken both French 
and English. 

The definite statement as to the use of both French and Eng-> 
lish at the coronation ceremony on Christmas 1066 is excep- 
tional/ Geoffrey of Coutances in French asked the Normans 
who were present if they would have William for king, and 
then Aldred, archbishop of York, asked in the English to^ngue if 
the English would have William for king. The Norman 
guards outside the abbey, hearing the shouts of the English in 
a tongue they did not understand, suspected trouble and set 
fire to the neighboring houses. Then the crowd of men and 
women of all ranks and conditions, seized with panic, escaped 
from the church. Here it is evident that the masses of 
English understood only English, and of the Normans only 
French. But this was in 1066, and gives us no information 
that we should not have taken for granted, except that it shows' 
how from the very first practically all classes would hear both 
English and French. 

Of Englishmen who probably spoke French, Ingulf, whom 
Orderic as well as the Pseudo-Ingulf describes as an English- 
man that had been secretary to the king and a monk at Fon- 
tinelle, is one.^ If it is true, as the Pseudo-Ingulf says, that 
he was William's secretary on the latter's visit to England in 
1 05 1, we seem to have here another Englishman who knew* 
French before the conquest. There is a poissibility that he 
was of French birth, though born in England, for Orderic 
calls him "natione Anglicus." not "genere Anglicus." Still, 
the Pseudo-Ingulf says specifically that he was boni in Lon- 
don of English parents. In any case, the fact that he w:as! 

1 See above, p. 20. 
» Orderic, II, 285. 



78 ENGLISH AND FRENCH IN ENGLAND, 1066-1100 

secretary of the king makes it practically certain that he was 
bilingual, and makes plausible Freeman's suggestion that it 
may have been he who wrote the English writs of the Con- 
queror/ That such an Englishman as Eadmer (bom c. 
1064), the confidant and companion of Anselm, whom he 
accompanied to Rome and with whom he was present at the 
Council oi Bari, 1098, spoke French, is practically certain. 
Even Hereward is represented as understanding and speaking 
French. The story is one in which there is obviously a con- 
siderable admixture of legend ; ^ but the writer had lived in the 
Fen country and had seen some of Hereward's companions. 
Moreover, it is not at all improbable that in view of his ex- 
periences in Flanders and Maine, Hereward had picked up a 
knowledge of French, as many English soldiers must have 
done, whom William employed in his campaigns at home and 
abroad. A story is told of a wealthy Englishman, Ligulf, 
who about 1080 gave two bells to the new monastery of St. 
Albans, to purchase which he had sold some goats and sheep. 
On hearing the bells ring for the first time, he exclaimed 
jocularly in English, "How sweetly bleat my goats and 
sheep!" — "jocose ait Anglico idiomate." ^ Ligulf was a 
wealthy English noble, on terms oi intimacy with abbot 
Paul, a foreigner. Why does the chronicler go out of his way 
to note that he made the joke in English? Are we to infer 
that other Englishmen of the upper ranks spoke French? or 
that Ligulf, though speaking English on this occasion, had 
learned ordinarily to use French? Or is the "Anglico 
idiomate " simply gratuitous? 

We come to a little more secure ground in the cases of 
Aethelwig, abbot of Evesham, and Wulfstan, bishop of Wor- 

^ Norman Conquest, IV, 600. 

2 (Jesta Herwardi, in Rolls Series ed. of Gaimar, I, 385-386. 

' Quoted by Freeman, Norman Conquest, IV, 400. 



THE USE OF FRENCH, ENGLISH, AND LATIN yg 

cester. The former it seems was entrusted with large powers 
in seven shires and had authority tO' hear cases not only in 
these but elsewhere in England. It is said that wherever he 
went, the French as well as the English respected his judg- 
ment as being most just/ Evidently the abbot heard causes 
of both Englishmen and Frenchmen, and causes between both. 
He must certainly have understood French, on this account asl 
well as because he was a member of the king's council. 

That Wulfstan both understood and spoke French I be-t 
lieve there can be little doubt. Malmesbury ^ tells of his being! 
summoned to the council toi answer concerning the dependence 
of the sees of Worcester and Dorchester on York, and alsoi 
concerning his insufficient leaniing. His dependents tried to 
dissuade him from going, but he was determined to- appear 
and answer for himself. He went before the council, won 
his point and apparently the friendship of his opponent, the 
archbishop of York, and is represented as having spoken in 
the Norman tongue. " Ita data benedictione monacho, mini- 
mae f acundiae viro, sed Normannicae linguae sciolo, rem per- 
orans obtinuit, ut qui suae diocesis ante indignus putabatur 
regimine, ab archiepiscopo Eboraci suppliciter rogaretur ut 
suas dignaretur lustrare partes, quo ipse pro timore hostium 
vel sermonis ignorantia cavebat accedere." The passage hasi 
its difficulties, but monacho can refer only to Wulfstan, whoi 
was a monk as well as a bishop; likewise znro and sciolo. 
That is, Wulfstan had little facility in the use of the Norman- 
French, but had sufficient command of it to address the king 
and his barons in their own tongue. Florence of Worcester 
says that he "constanter proclamabat, expetebat, justitiamque 
inde fieri tarn ipsis qui concilio praeerant, quam a rege flagita- 

^ Historia Evesham, 89. — "tarn Franci quam Angli pro justissima lege 
tenebant quidquid ipse legibus saecularibus dicebat." 
^De Gestis Regum, II, 355; Gesta PontiUcum, 285. 



8o ENGLISH AND FRENCH IN ENGLAND, 1066-1100 

bat,"^ which would imply the use on this occasion of con- 
siderable emphasis and insistance, if not of eloquence. In 
another passage Malmesbury speaks of Wulfstan as an elo- 
quent extempore preacher, and informs us that he was ac- 
cused by Lanfranc "de litterarum inscientia." ^ Freeman 
considers that Lanfranc's opposition was due to Wulfstan' si 
inability to speak any language but his own, and cites Roger 
of Wendover's description of him as " qui linguam Gallicanum 
non noverat nee regiis conciliis interesse poterat."^ But 
Roger of Wendover is a hundred years later (d. 1237), and 
his assertion is flatly opposed not only to Malmesbury's state- 
ment as to Wulfsan's speaking French, but to what we know; 
of his intimacy with Norman and other foreigners, of his 
actual presence at the king's council and his activity there in 
defending the rights of his see, and concerning his adopting 
Norman ways in his household. There is nothing in Malmes- 
bury's statement of Lanfranc's opposition to Wulfstan to 
warrant the inference that it was due to his ignorance of 
French. The whole context shows very clearly that it wasi 
because, to the great prelate and theologian oif Italy and 
Normandy, the English bishop seemed deficient in Latin learn- 
ing. Wulfstan had had such training in letters as was to 
be had in England — '"quanta tunc in Anglia erat" — wasI 
distinguished for great virtues rather than learning, and 
though ignorant of the fables of the poets and the mazy 
syllogisms of dialectics, was well equipped in essentials, and 
could move his hearers to tears through his finished (elegan- 
tem) extempore preaching.* 

My interpretation of the above passage then is that al- 

' Florence of Worcester, II, 6. 
* Gesta Pontificum, 278-284. 
^Norman Conquest, IV, 380 f. 
^ Gesta Pontificum, 280-281. 



THE USE OF FRENCH, ENGLISH, AND LATIN gl 

though Wulf Stan's erudition was inadequate in the eyes of 
Lanfranc and perhaps of other Hildebrandine reformers, hig 
natural eloquence and piety were not only great but widely 
recognized; and that so early as 1071 or 1075, at least 
this English churchman had a sufficient knowledge of French 
to address the council in that tongue. We also incidentally 
learn that, contrary to Freeman's surmise,^ the newly ap- 
pointed archbishop of York, Thomas of Bayeux, had not yet 
learned English, 

There is some evidence that numbers of foreigners learned 
English at an early date. William I's attempt tO' master that 
tongue has often been cited. His desire was to be able td 
hear the complaints of his subjects without an interpreter and 
to do justice to all; but his time of life and his many pre- 
occupations necessarily rendered his study difficult." There is 
a possible though remote inference from this that among other 
Normans, yoimger and less occupied, the learning of English 
was an easier and more frequent accomplishment. This be-- 
comes more probable in the light oif other evidence'. In dis- 
cussing the point, however, attention has been too exclusively 
devoted to the question whether the successive kings knew 
English. There were many classes of Normans in England 
who would find it more necessary or desirable to speak Eng- 
lish than would the king. It is among the nobles, churchmen, 
and townsmen, and in the circumstances of their activities, 
that we must look for evidence rather than to the king. 

The most interesting testimony is that of the charters and 
writs of William I and William 11.^ None of the writs or 
charters of these reigns are in French; the earliest extant 
charter in French was granted by Stephen Langton. Of 

* Norman Conquest, IV, 342. 
•Orderic, II, 215. 

* Regesta Regum Anglo-N ormannorum, 1, 1066-, "00. 



82 ENGLISH AND FRENCH IN. ENGLAND, 1066-1100 

487 documents listed in this calendar of the two reigns, nine- 
teen are in English/ and there are nine of which both a Latin 
and an English version are preserved. It is remarkable that 
there is only one writ in English that may belong to the 
reign of William II, no. 333, and that there are no writs of 
which both English and Latin versions are extant that may 
certainly be dated after William I. There is a noticeable dis- 
continuance oi the use of English in these documents after 
about 1 075- 1 078. Of those in English only, there are but 
two that may be later than 1075 — nos. 241 and 333, dated by 
the editor 1066- 1087 ^^d 1075- 1092 respectively. Of those 
in both English and Latin, only three may come after 1078 — 
nos. 187, 265, 277, dated respectively 1076- 1083, 1070-1087, 
1 085- 1 087. Of those in English alone, only two are ad- 
dressed to men of English name only, nos. 16 and 25; the 
former to Edmund, sheriff of Herts, Alfwin Gottun, and 
Leofwin Scufe; the latter to Leofwin, bishop of Lichfield, 
earl Edwin, and all the thanes of Staffordshire. Six of the 
English writs are addressed generally, or to bishops, earls, 
sheriffs, thanes, etc. of this or that shire, and hence are prob- 
ably addressed to some foreigners as well as natives. 
Eleven are addressed specifically to individual foreigners and 
individual Englishmen. Of these, no. 7 is issued in the king's 
name during his absence in Normandy in 1067 by William 
Fitz-Osbem as justiciar, and is addressed to bishop Giso, 
Eadnoth the Staller, Tofi the sheriff, and all the thanes o£ 
Somersetshire. No. 9 (1067) is addressed to bishops Her- 
man and Wulfstan, earl Eustace, and Eadric and Brihtric, 
and all the king's thanes of Wilts and Gloucestershire. No. 
15 (1067?) is addressed to bishop William, Gosfrith the 
port-reeve (whom Round has identified as Geoffrey de Mande- 
ville the first), and all the burghers French and English of 

*No. 15 is in English, though not so noted by the editor. 



THE USE OF FRENCH, ENGLISH, AND LATIN 83 

London. No. 31 (1066- 1069) is addressed to all the king's 
thanes, French and English, of Yorkshire; no. 32 (1066- 

1069) to Aldred, Wulfstan, William Fitz-Osbern, and all 
the thanes of Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, and Oxford- 
shire; nos. 40, 41, 42, ( 1 066-1 070) to bishop Aegelmar, earl 
Ralph, and others of Norfolk and Suffolk; no. 45 (1066-* 

1070) to Stigand, earl Eustace, and the king's thanes of Sur- 
rey; no. 87 (1066- 1 075) to William, bishop of London, 
Swegen the sheriff, and all the thanes oif Essex; and no. 333 
( 1 075-1 092) to Thomas, archbishop of York, Turold and 
Eamwig, sheriff (or sheriffs?) and all the thanes of Notting- 
hamshire and Lincolnshire. 

The question arises in the case of writs which appear only 
in English but are addressed to foreigners as well as natives, 
may there not have been issued originally a Latin version also, 
as in the case of the writs in two versions addressed to per- 
sons of the two nationalities, which has since been lost? Or 
are we to suppose that for some reason the chancery issued 
its writs sometimes in English, sometimes in Latin, sometimesi 
in both tongues, even when French and English officials are 
addressed? It is impossible to answer these queries, but we 
may note that Round's explanation of three English writs 
which he considers in Feudal England^ pp. 422-423, is not al- 
together satisfying. He implies that English is used because 
the king is addressing English authorities, not Norman, " in 
a part oif the realm not yet under Norman sway." This he 
applies particularly to the charter listed as no. 9 in the Regesta, 
addressed to bishops Herman and Wulfstan, earl Eustace, Ead- 
ric, Brihtric, and all the thanes of Wilts and Gloucestershire. 
But this will obviously not explain the later English writs, nor 
such as were addressed to Norman officials like Gosfrith o£ 
London, William Fitz-Osbern, Thomas of York, etc. ; nor such 
as pertained to less remote districts as Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, 



84 ENGLISH AND FRENCH IN ENGLAND, 1066-1100 

Surrey, and the city oi London. The alternative seems toi 
be that William, wishing to retain as much of the old English 
law as possible and as many of the old English legal forms, 
retained also the use of the English tongue, and that he em- 
ployed English in those writs that concerned districts where 
English officials, thanes, etc. were in the majority, or in 
those addressed to foreign officials who imderstood English. 
There is strong reason to believe that most of the foreigners 
mentioned in the English and English-Latin writs may have 
known English. Bi.shops William of London, Herman of 
Ramsbury and later of Sherboume, and Giso of Wells had 
held their sees since 1051, 1045, and 1060 respectively, and 
may very well have acquired a knowledge of English by the 
time their names appear in English writs of the Conqueror. 
Besides this, Herman and Giso were Lorrainers, which would 
possibly make such acquisition easier. Baldwin, abbot of 
St. Albans, 1065, who had been a monk of St. Denis, and was' 
either a Frenchman or a Lorrainer, may have learned English 
by 1 07 1. The Eustace mentioned in no. 9 is Eustace of 
Boulogne, who was the second husband of Goda, daughter of 
Aethelred H, and had been in England as early as 1051. The 
earl Ralph of nos. 40, 41, 42 is Ralph of Norfolk, described 
as the son of an English father; and William Mallet of no. 
47 was half English and half Norman, and if not bom in 
England had probably settled there early in Edward's reign. 

In the pact drawn up and agreed to by five English and 
two foreign ecclesiastics, referred to above,^ English is used, 
although we should have expected Latin. Presumably the 
two foreign abbots, Ralph of Winchcombe and Serlo of Glou- 
cester, closely associated with English abbots in a definite re- 
ligious cause, and entering into an agreement with them which 
was embodied in a document written in English, understood 
that tongue. 

iSee p. 60. 



THE USE OF FRENCH, ENGLISH, AND LATIN g^ 

I Normans would the more easily learn English through the 
necessity of their using many English words, especially place- 
names, titles, and legal terms./ Only a few Norman place- 
names are found in the sources, such as Malvoisin, Montacute, 
Rougemont, Pontefract, Richmond, Montgomery, etc. The 
great majority of places retain their English names, and 
these would of course be used by Normans of all classes. The 
very titles of many Normans of rank in the new land were 
English. Roger de Montgomery is earl of Shrewsbury, 
bishop Odo of Bayeux is earl of Kent, William Fitz-Osbern 
is earl of Hereford, Lanf ranc is archbishop of Canterbury, etc. 
Law terms such as geld, danegeld, scot and lot, sac and soc, 
toll and team, infangthief, gritkbrict, hafnsocn, etc, are fre-^ 
quent in the sources. 

Quite the most significant fact bearing upon the use of 
English is one in the life of Orderic the historian. Sent to 
St. Evroult, Normandy, at the age of ten, he says that, like 
Joseph in Egypt, he heard a tongue to which he was a stranger 
— linguam, ut Joseph in Aegypta, quam non noveram audivi.^ 
This could only have been French, for he had been taught 
Latin, as we have seen, by the priest Si ward in Shrewsbury. 
Thus, the son of a Norman-French priest and native of 
Orleans, Odelirius, born in England in 1075 of a mother who 
was most likely English, knew only his mother's tongue until 
he went abroad at the age of ten. This fact of the utmost 
imporance implies that the French father knew English and 
habitually used English, in the home at least. Orderic speaks 
affectionately of his father, as if the latter had played a large 
part in his boyhood life. If Orderic learned no French in 
England, it was apparently not because his father was an 
absent or surrepetitious father. He was present at Shrews- 
bury as a counsellor to Roger and as a priest was active in 

1 Orderic, V, 135. 



86 ENGLISH AND FRENCH IN ENGLAND, 1066-1100 

the local clerical life. He took a personal interest in his son's' 
education/ That Orderic knew English is clear from the 
fact that he was taught for five years by an English priest, 
apart from the fact that his mother was all but certainly Eng- 
lish. The only conclusion possible is that Odelirius, a French- 
man coming into England with Roger de Montgomery, spoke 
English to his English wife and to his children by her, and 
that the first-'bom at least did not learn French while he re- 
mained in England, even though that tongue was the mother- 
tongue of his father. The evidence is still more important 
as pointing to the probability that as early as 1075, nine years 
after Hastings, English was the native tongue of the majority, 
if not all, of those born of an English mother and a foreign 
father. If the son of a priest on the marches of Wales was 
left in the care and tutelage of his English mother, still more 
likely would Normans in greater positions and with more 
numerous activities leave their sons to be raised in the English 
home and to learn the English tongue, even though afterward, 
as in the case of Orderic himself, they were sent abroad for 
a higher education. Let us remember in this connection the 
significance of the phrase " the mother-tongue." 

I The employment of English nurses for children of Nor- 
mans, whether by an English or Norman wife, would likewise 
be a means by w' ':h children of foreign or of mixed descent 
would learn Er, .sh.l About 1095 we read of a certain priest 
Odo, whose name makes it likely that he was a foreigner, 
having Brichtiva as a servant and nurse for his children.^ 
Further, she is represented as " speaking of herself to her 
master as a slave and as asking him to take her to the shrine 
of St. Edmund to be cured of a seven years' malady, pleading! 
her fidelity and care. That she was English is certain, and 

1 See above, p. 64. 

'Samson, in Mem. St. Edmunds Abbey, I, 164. 



THE USE OF FRENCH, ENGLISH, AND LATIN g? 

most probably she spoke only English. The presumption is that 
Odo the master could understand if not speak English, and 
that the children would learn English from this English 
nurse. 

Other testimony as to the use of English is gleaned from 
the lives of some of the early historians of England, although 
this evidence strictly belongs for the most part to a slightly 
later time. William of Malmesbury (c. 1084- c. 11 43), who 
finished his two most important works about 1125, describesi 
himself as one in whose veins flowed the blood of either 
people.^ That he knew French is probable from the fact that 
he was associated with persons of high authority, with the 
abbot of Malmesbury, with Robert of Gloucester, etc. That 
he knew English is shown by his use of English as well as 
Latin sources. In his life of St. Dunstan he says that the 
monks of Glastonbury supplied him with books or writings in 
Latin and English.^ He also comments on the great differ- 
ences between the English of the north and that of the south 
in his day. The tongue of the Northumbrians, and especially 
in York, he says, is so crude that we of the south cannot 
understand it.^ He calls England his fatherland, devotes in 
his writings quite as much attention to the kings, saints, and 
churchmen of old England as to those of the new, and says 
that he would gladly write the lives of England's saints were 
it not that material is lacking and his powers are inadequate. 
In short, here, as in the case of Orderic, a man of mixed 
descent, born in England about 1084, thinks of himself as an 
Englishman, has identified himself thoroughly with England, 
and, as Orderic, had probably learned English as his mother 
tongue. ' 

' De Gestis Re gum, 283. 

* Memorials St. Dunstan, 252. 

^ Gesta PontiUcu/m, 209. I 



88 ENGLISH AND FRENCH IN ENGLAND, 1066-1100 

Of Henry of Huntingdon our knowledge is less full, since 
we do not know whether he was of English or Norman birth. 
We do know that he was intimate in the household of Robert 
of Bloet, bishop of London, with whom he mentions sitting* 
at dinner, and that he was there associated with Richard, the 
king's bastard son.^ Thus he must certainly have spoken 
French. That he was able at least to read English is clear 
from the fact that he uses the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as a 
source, translates the Battle of Brunanburgh into Latin, and 
explains several English expressions.^ 

Still more interesting is the case of Geoffrey Gaimar, who 
wrote his Estorie des Engles between 1135 and 1147. If, as 
conjectured, the name of Gaimar is from "a place in the 
town of Caen,"® he was most likely a Norman in the sense 
of one who was born in Normandy, whose mother-tongue 
would therefore be Norman-French. If this surmise is 
correct, we have in Gaimar an example of the coming in of 
new settlers from Normandy either late in William II's or in 
Henry I's reign, and also an illustration of how such a person 
might become Anglicized in many respects almost at once. 
He wrote his history at the request of Custance, wife of Ralph 
Fitz-Gilbert, who for the purpose borrowed manuscripts from 
Walter Espec, which the latter borrowed from Robert of 
Gloucester, Gaimar used books in French, English, and Latin, 
and according to his own account,* not only Robert of Glou- 
cester but Walter Espec, Ralph Fitz-Gilbert and his wife 
Custance were interested in English history. Thus, though 
apparently a man of foreign birth as well as foreign descent, 
Gaimar learned English so as to be able to use English works 

* Henry of Huntingdon, Letter to Walter, 303, 307. 
'Historia Anglorum, 170, 195, 215. 

'Rolls Series ed., II, 10. 

* Lines 6435 ff. 



THE USE OF FRENCH, ENGLISH, AND LATIN go 

in writing his history, identified himself with the country to 
such an extent as to be chosen by Custance as the proper 
person to write such a book, and devoted two thirds of his 
book to the history of England before 1066, and a large part 
of the remainder to the exploits of Hereward, whom he des- 
cribes as a noble man, one of the best in the country. That 
Gaimar knew English is shown by his naming all the English 
shires, "in English scyre," though "we who speak Romance 
call them otherwise. What is named scire in English is called 
cunte in French." He gives the English names throughout, 
" for I know how to name them all." ^ 

The relative position of French, English, and Latin as 
languages of record in this period is likewise a subject on 
which we have no very specific direct evidence. In the ab- 
sence of direct statements by contemporaries, we are obliged 
to depend upon the use of these tongues in monuments that 
have been preserved to us. There is no document I know of 
which, written in French in England, is certainly between 1066 
and 1 1 00. The Leges Willelmi Conquestoris, compiled about 
1070, it is true, appear in a French as well as a Latin version. 
But it is highly improbable that the French version is any- 
thing like so early, and it is believed by most scholars that the 
Latin text is the original.^ We have pointed out that all 
other documents of the reigns of William I and William II 
are in Latin or English. Ramsay has called attention to the 
prevalent error that Norman-French was the language of the 
law-courts, and adds that until the time of Henry III " alli 

^ Estorie des Engles, I, 281 f. 

"For discussion see Schmid, Die Gesetse der Angelsachsen, pp. Ivi-lx. 
H. Heim, in i'Jber die Echtheit des franzosischen Textes der Gesetse Wil- 
helms des Eroberers (Giessen diss. 1882), argues for the originality of the 
French version, as opposed to Palgrave and Schmid, believing that in it 
we have a compilation made to serve Norman judges and vassals who did 
not know English, nor probably Latin. 



90 



ENGLISH AND FRENCH IN ENGLAND. 1066-1100 



official documents, laws, writs, charters were drawn up 
mostly in Latin, but occasionally in English." ^ In fact, of 
the two vernacular tongues in England, English, as a language 
of record in competition with Latin, seems to have been much 
more important than French. What is true of writs, charters, 
and laws is true of the chronicles of this period; they are in 
Latin or English — chiefly the former — not in French. The 
Hildebrandine reforms, introduced into England by the Nor- 
man monks and clergy with the coming of Lanfanc, brought 
about a great increase in Latin learning and laid a new stress 
upon the importance of Latin as the language of record for 
all western Europe. To the Latin-writing churchmen of 
England the English tongue seemed oftentimes diffuse and 
obscure. They not infrequently translated documents from 
English into Latin, especially charters; and they looked upon 
Latin as a tongue of greater authority, universality, and per- 
manence. The disuse of English was not because of the in- 
troduction of French, but because of the increased use of 
Latin by a body of churchmen trained to consider Latin the 
superior tongue for literary purposes. To the historian of 
the time, French no less than English was a " vulgar " tongue 
as compared with Latin. Orderic in one passage speaks of 
" villas, quas a manendo manerios vulgo vocamus," ^ where 
"manerios" is evidently Old French Manoir in Latin dress, 
and where vulgo is exactly parallel to the vulgo in "ad op- 
pidum quod vulgo UUindelesora nuncupatur." ^ That some- 
times it was churchmen of English birth who preferred Latin 
is seen in the case of Osbern of Canterbury who had beeni 
brought up in the monastery there and who under Lanfranc 
became an ardent follower of the new monasticism. In his 

• ^Foundations of England, II, 153, citing Palgrave. 
* Orderic, II, 223. 
*Chronicon Monasterii de Abingdon, II, 161. 



THE USE OF FRENCH, ENGLISH, AND LATIN gi 

life of St. Dunstan Osbem drew upon certain Latin lives and 
on some that had been translated into English. From the 
latter he says he will translate back into Latin such portions 
as he wishes to use.^ 

[Yet in spite of this great importance of Latin,^ English con- 
tinued to be used for legal, historical, and religious writings! 
through the rest of the century, during which time, so far as 
we have record, French was not used, i And it is clear that 
the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles are only a fragment of those 
that once existed.^ Gradually, however, English was dis- 
placed, but by Latin rather than by French. This is illustrated 
in Annates Anglo-sa^onici Breves^ compiled at Canterbury. 
Down to 1109 these annals are written in English, thereafter 
in Latin, with the exception of a short entry under 1130.^ 
The same use of Latin beside English is seen in ms. F of the 
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (ms. Cott. Domitian, A viii), which 
is of the early twelfth century, most of it in one hand. The 
Alfred Saga, the Proverbs of Alfred, and the Worcesteiii 
Cathedral fragments have been cited as pointing to the regret 
Englishmen felt at the passing of the old learning in English 
and the coming in of new teachers.* But the ascription of 
the proverbs to Alfred indicates simply a desire to give them 
the authority of a great name, rather than sorrow at the pas- 
sing of the old order. The regret of the author of the 
Worcester fragment over the passing of Bede, Aelfric, and 
others does not differ from Orderic's lament at the decay of 
English learning and English monasticism, except that in the 
latter there is no implied contrast between those who formerly 

* Memorials St. Dunstan, 70. 

•Birandl, in Paul's Grundriss, p. 1125, and references there. 
aLiebermann, Ungedruckte Anglo-Normannische Geschichtsquellen, pp. 
1-8; Brand!, in Paul's Grundriss, p. 1123. 
4 Brandl, Paul's Grundriss, p. 1133. 



Q2 ENGLISH AND FRENCH IN ENGLAND, 1066-1100 

taught the people in English and those who now do not. Eng- 
lishmen of the former day had often used Latin in preference 
to English, as had Bede himself, and in the early days of 
Norman rule such Englishmen as Osbern and Eadmer fell in 
with the new order of things and wrote in Latin, to say noth- 
ing of Florence of Worcester, Simeon of Durham, and others, 
who may have been of pure English descent. 



VII 

Conclusion 

The present study of the relations between the French and 
English peoples and tongues in England from 1066 to 11 00, 
founded upon a fresh review of the sources, has resulted 
chiefly, it is hoped, in placing our knowledge of those relations 
upon a slightly more definite historical basis. Much that has 
heretofore been written on the subject begins only with the 
middle of the twelfth century and illustrates conditions of 
English society and the importance of the French tongue after 
the country had received a new impulse from France by the 
accession of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine. For the 
earlier period, in which the results of the conquest itself can 
more clearly be seen, we have in the past had to depend 
largely upon speculations as to what must have been the facts 
as to speech conditions, rather than upon what the facts 
actually were. Our aim has been to collect what specific illus- 
trations there are of conditions in the earlier period, and 
though it must be confessed that we still have largely to do 
with probabilities rather than certainties, it seems warrantable 
to draw the following conclusions : 

I ( I ) In eleventh-century England there was no sufficiently 
developed national unity or sentiment to cause a hard and 
fast line to be drawn between native and foreigner or to 
check freedom of intercourse between the two peoples. 

'■(2) At no time after the conquest was there any English 
hatred of the Normans that was at all general. Statements 
in the chroniclers that have lent color to the belief in a wide- 

93 



94 ENGLISH AND FRENCH IN ENGLAND, 1066-1100 

spread English hostility are largely rhetorical and are discre- 
dited by other contemporary evidence. Modem writers have 
greatly exaggerated v^hat feeling there was, and have used a 
few stock arguments, such as that drawn from the " Curse of 
Urse," in a totally misleading way. Many an Englishman, 
from 1066 on, showed a readiness to accept the new conditions 
and to work with the king and his followers in putting down 
disturbances and even revolts, in developing an effective gov- 
ernment, in codifying and administering the law, and in bring- 
ing about church reform. 

[(3) Nor was there any general feeling of contempt on 
the part of the Normans for the land or the people they had 
conquered. Scattered remarks of a slurring kind, uttered by 
individual Normans here and there, are far out-weighed by 
the manner in which, from the first, Normans identified them- 
selves with the new land, with its history, its traditions, its 
life, and looked upon themselves as Englishmen, owning Eng- 
lish lands, holding English offices, bearing English titles, 
marrying English women, and raising a new generation of 
mixed descent, who, it would seem, often learned English 

Is their mother-tongue. 
(4) In spite of whatever English hatred and Norman 
contempt there may have been, there was contact and inter- 
course between the two peoples from the year 1066 — ^often 
close and cordial — in the army, at the king's court, in the 
courts of law, in the manor courts, in the church and monastic 
life of the time, in the commercial life O'f the towns, and in 
the domestic life of the home. The fusion of the two races 
began not *'as early as the beginning of the twelfth century 
when Henry I came to the throne," but as early as 1066. In- 
deed, it might be proved to have begun in the reign of Edward 
the Confessor. 
I (5) From the first. Englishmen and Normans heard each 



CONCLUSION n- 

other's tongue — as they did in Westminster Abbey at the 
coronation of WilHam I. The many ways in which indi- 
viduals of the two nationaHties were brought into close con- 
tact implies the existence in England from 1066 on, of many 
persons who must have been more or less bilingual. Circum- 
stances were such as to necessitate and encourage Englishmen 
to learn French, and Normans to learn English. There isl 
strong probability that Harold, Ingulf, Eadmer, Aethelwig, 
and other Englishmen were able to speak French; and that 
WilHam, bishop of London, Herman, Giso, Eustace, andf 
other Normans knew English. There would seem to be no 
doubt that by 1071 or 1075 Wulfstan could speak French well 
enough to address the king's council in that tongue, or that 
Odelirius spoke English by 1075 or 1080. That the Norman 
looked upon the English tongue as barbarous or "contented 
himself with simply despising it," there is no evidence. The 
case of Orderic seems to prove that children of Norman 
fathers first learned English as their mother-tongue not at the 
end of the twelfth century,^ but as early as 1075. And the 
necessity of there being many persons who were bilingual 
compels us to modify, if not to give up entirely, the old 
picture of "two quite distinct speeches current in the same 
country, the one that of a foreign conqueror, the other that 
of the conquered natives." Finally, as a language of record 
in this period, English is of greater importance than French, 
and the effect of the conquest was to increase the use of Latin, 
as opposed to French as well as English, for legal, historical, 
and religious purposes. 

^ See a typical discussion of Trevisa's comment on the famous passage 
in Higden, in Lounsbury, History of the English Language, p. 61. Cf. p. 56. 



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